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Prester John

by John Buchan · English · Gutenberg #611 · 417,453 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Prester John

Author: John Buchan


        
Release date: August 1, 1996 [eBook #611]
                Most recently updated: June 30, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/611

Credits: Jo Churcher


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRESTER JOHN ***
PRESTER JOHN

by JOHN BUCHAN




TO
LIONEL PHILLIPS

Time, they say, must the best of us capture,
And travel and battle and gems and gold
No more can kindle the ancient rapture,
For even the youngest of hearts grows old.
But in you, I think, the boy is not over;
So take this medley of ways and wars
As the gift of a friend and a fellow-lover
Of the fairest country under the stars.

                                        J. B.




CONTENTS

 Chapter I. The Man on the Kirkcaple Shore
 Chapter II. Furth! Fortune!
 Chapter III. Blaauwildebeestefontein
 Chapter IV. My Journey to the Winter-Veld
 Chapter V. Mr Wardlaw Has a Premonition
 Chapter VI. The Drums Beat at Sunset
 Chapter VII. Captain Arcoll Tells a Tale
 Chapter VIII. I Fall in Again with the Reverend John Laputa
 Chapter IX. The Store at Umvelos'
 Chapter X. I Go Treasure-Hunting
 Chapter XI. The Cave of the Rooirand
 Chapter XII. Captain Arcoll Sends a Message
 Chapter XIII. The Drift of the Letaba
 Chapter XIV. I Carry the Collar of Prester John
 Chapter XV. Morning in the Berg
 Chapter XVI. Inanda's Kraal
 Chapter XVII. A Deal and Its Consequences
 Chapter XVIII. How a Man May Sometimes Put His Trust in a Horse
 Chapter XIX. Arcoll's Shepherding
 Chapter XX. My Last Sight of the Reverend John Laputa
 Chapter XXI. I Climb the Crags a Second Time
 Chapter XXII. A Great Peril and a Great Salvation
 Chapter XXIII. My Uncle's Gift Is Many Times Multiplied




CHAPTER I
THE MAN ON THE KIRKCAPLE SHORE


I mind as if it were yesterday my first sight of the man. Little I knew
at the time how big the moment was with destiny, or how often that face
seen in the fitful moonlight would haunt my sleep and disturb my waking
hours. But I mind yet the cold grue of terror I got from it, a terror
which was surely more than the due of a few truant lads breaking the
Sabbath with their play.

The town of Kirkcaple, of which and its adjacent parish of Portincross
my father was the minister, lies on a hillside above the little bay of
Caple, and looks squarely out on the North Sea. Round the horns of land
which enclose the bay the coast shows on either side a battlement of
stark red cliffs through which a burn or two makes a pass to the
water’s edge. The bay itself is ringed with fine clean sands, where we
lads of the burgh school loved to bathe in the warm weather. But on
long holidays the sport was to go farther afield among the cliffs; for
there there were many deep caves and pools, where podleys might be
caught with the line, and hid treasures sought for at the expense of
the skin of the knees and the buttons of the trousers. Many a long
Saturday I have passed in a crinkle of the cliffs, having lit a fire of
driftwood, and made believe that I was a smuggler or a Jacobite new
landed from France. There was a band of us in Kirkcaple, lads of my own
age, including Archie Leslie, the son of my father’s session-clerk, and
Tam Dyke, the provost’s nephew. We were sealed to silence by the blood
oath, and we bore each the name of some historic pirate or sailorman. I
was Paul Jones, Tam was Captain Kidd, and Archie, need I say it, was
Morgan himself. Our tryst was a cave where a little water called the
Dyve Burn had cut its way through the cliffs to the sea. There we
forgathered in the summer evenings and of a Saturday afternoon in
winter, and told mighty tales of our prowess and flattered our silly
hearts. But the sober truth is that our deeds were of the humblest, and
a dozen of fish or a handful of apples was all our booty, and our
greatest exploit a fight with the roughs at the Dyve tan-work.

My father’s spring Communion fell on the last Sabbath of April, and on
the particular Sabbath of which I speak the weather was mild and bright
for the time of year. I had been surfeited with the Thursday’s and
Saturday’s services, and the two long diets of worship on the Sabbath
were hard for a lad of twelve to bear with the spring in his bones and
the sun slanting through the gallery window. There still remained the
service on the Sabbath evening—a doleful prospect, for the Rev. Mr
Murdoch of Kilchristie, noted for the length of his discourses, had
exchanged pulpits with my father. So my mind was ripe for the proposal
of Archie Leslie, on our way home to tea, that by a little skill we
might give the kirk the slip. At our Communion the pews were emptied of
their regular occupants and the congregation seated itself as it
pleased. The manse seat was full of the Kirkcaple relations of Mr
Murdoch, who had been invited there by my mother to hear him, and it
was not hard to obtain permission to sit with Archie and Tam Dyke in
the cock-loft in the gallery. Word was sent to Tam, and so it happened
that three abandoned lads duly passed the plate and took their seats in
the cock-loft. But when the bell had done jowing, and we heard by the
sounds of their feet that the elders had gone in to the kirk, we
slipped down the stairs and out of the side door. We were through the
churchyard in a twinkling, and hot-foot on the road to the Dyve Burn.
It was the fashion of the genteel in Kirkcaple to put their boys into
what were known as Eton suits—long trousers, cut-away jackets, and
chimney-pot hats. I had been one of the earliest victims, and well I
remember how I fled home from the Sabbath school with the snowballs of
the town roughs rattling off my chimney-pot. Archie had followed, his
family being in all things imitators of mine. We were now clothed in
this wearisome garb, so our first care was to secrete safely our hats
in a marked spot under some whin bushes on the links. Tam was free from
the bondage of fashion, and wore his ordinary best knickerbockers. From
inside his jacket he unfolded his special treasure, which was to light
us on our expedition—an evil-smelling old tin lantern with a shutter.

Tam was of the Free Kirk persuasion, and as his Communion fell on a
different day from ours, he was spared the bondage of church attendance
from which Archie and I had revolted. But notable events had happened
that day in his church. A black man, the Rev. John Something-or-other,
had been preaching. Tam was full of the portent. “A nagger,” he said,
“a great black chap as big as your father, Archie.” He seemed to have
banged the bookboard with some effect, and had kept Tam, for once in
his life, awake. He had preached about the heathen in Africa, and how a
black man was as good as a white man in the sight of God, and he had
forecast a day when the negroes would have something to teach the
British in the way of civilization. So at any rate ran the account of
Tam Dyke, who did not share the preacher’s views. “It’s all nonsense,
Davie. The Bible says that the children of Ham were to be our servants.
If I were the minister I wouldn’t let a nigger into the pulpit. I
wouldn’t let him farther than the Sabbath school.”

Night fell as we came to the broomy spaces of the links, and ere we had
breasted the slope of the neck which separates Kirkcaple Bay from the
cliffs it was as dark as an April evening with a full moon can be. Tam
would have had it darker. He got out his lantern, and after a
prodigious waste of matches kindled the candle-end inside, turned the
dark shutter, and trotted happily on. We had no need of his lighting
till the Dyve Burn was reached and the path began to descend steeply
through the rift in the crags.

It was here we found that some one had gone before us. Archie was great
in those days at tracking, his ambition running in Indian paths. He
would walk always with his head bent and his eyes on the ground,
whereby he several times found lost coins and once a trinket dropped by
the provost’s wife. At the edge of the burn, where the path turns
downward, there is a patch of shingle washed up by some spate. Archie
was on his knees in a second. “Lads,” he cried, “there’s spoor here;”
and then after some nosing, “it’s a man’s track, going downward, a big
man with flat feet. It’s fresh, too, for it crosses the damp bit of
gravel, and the water has scarcely filled the holes yet.”

We did not dare to question Archie’s woodcraft, but it puzzled us who
the stranger could be. In summer weather you might find a party of
picnickers here, attracted by the fine hard sands at the burn mouth.
But at this time of night and season of the year there was no call for
any one to be trespassing on our preserves. No fishermen came this way,
the lobster-pots being all to the east, and the stark headland of the
Red Neb made the road to them by the water’s edge difficult. The
tan-work lads used to come now and then for a swim, but you would not
find a tan-work lad bathing on a chill April night. Yet there was no
question where our precursor had gone. He was making for the shore. Tam
unshuttered his lantern, and the steps went clearly down the corkscrew
path. “Maybe he is after our cave. We’d better go cannily.”

The glim was dowsed—the words were Archie’s—and in the best contraband
manner we stole down the gully. The business had suddenly taken an
eerie turn, and I think in our hearts we were all a little afraid. But
Tam had a lantern, and it would never do to turn back from an adventure
which had all the appearance of being the true sort. Half way down
there is a scrog of wood, dwarf alders and hawthorn, which makes an
arch over the path. I, for one, was glad when we got through this with
no worse mishap than a stumble from Tam which caused the lantern door
to fly open and the candle to go out. We did not stop to relight it,
but scrambled down the screes till we came to the long slabs of reddish
rock which abutted on the beach. We could not see the track, so we gave
up the business of scouts, and dropped quietly over the big boulder and
into the crinkle of cliff which we called our cave.

There was nobody there, so we relit the lantern and examined our
properties. Two or three fishing-rods for the burn, much damaged by
weather; some sea-lines on a dry shelf of rock; a couple of wooden
boxes; a pile of driftwood for fires, and a heap of quartz in which we
thought we had found veins of gold—such was the modest furnishing of
our den. To this I must add some broken clay pipes, with which we made
believe to imitate our elders, smoking a foul mixture of coltsfoot
leaves and brown paper. The band was in session, so following our
ritual we sent out a picket. Tam was deputed to go round the edge of
the cliff from which the shore was visible, and report if the coast was
clear.

He returned in three minutes, his eyes round with amazement in the
lantern light. “There’s a fire on the sands,” he repeated, “and a man
beside it.”

Here was news indeed. Without a word we made for the open, Archie
first, and Tam, who had seized and shuttered his lantern, coming last.
We crawled to the edge of the cliff and peered round, and there sure
enough, on the hard bit of sand which the tide had left by the burn
mouth, was a twinkle of light and a dark figure.

The moon was rising, and besides there was that curious sheen from the
sea which you will often notice in spring. The glow was maybe a hundred
yards distant, a little spark of fire I could have put in my cap, and,
from its crackling and smoke, composed of dry seaweed and half-green
branches from the burnside thickets. A man’s figure stood near it, and
as we looked it moved round and round the fire in circles which first
of all widened and then contracted.

The sight was so unexpected, so beyond the beat of our experience, that
we were all a little scared. What could this strange being want with a
fire at half-past eight of an April Sabbath night on the Dyve Burn
sands? We discussed the thing in whispers behind a boulder, but none of
us had any solution. “Belike he’s come ashore in a boat,” said Archie.
“He’s maybe a foreigner.” But I pointed out that, from the tracks which
Archie himself had found, the man must have come overland down the
cliffs. Tam was clear he was a madman, and was for withdrawing promptly
from the whole business.

But some spell kept our feet tied there in that silent world of sand
and moon and sea. I remember looking back and seeing the solemn,
frowning faces of the cliffs, and feeling somehow shut in with this
unknown being in a strange union. What kind of errand had brought this
interloper into our territory? For a wonder I was less afraid than
curious. I wanted to get to the heart of the matter, and to discover
what the man was up to with his fire and his circles.

The same thought must have been in Archie’s head, for he dropped on his
belly and began to crawl softly seawards. I followed, and Tam, with
sundry complaints, crept after my heels. Between the cliffs and the
fire lay some sixty yards of _débris_ and boulders above the level of
all but the high spring tides. Beyond lay a string of seaweedy pools
and then the hard sands of the burnfoot. There was excellent cover
among the big stones, and apart from the distance and the dim light,
the man by the fire was too preoccupied in his task to keep much
look-out towards the land. I remember thinking he had chosen his place
well, for save from the sea he could not be seen. The cliffs are so
undercut that unless a watcher on the coast were on their extreme edge
he would not see the burnfoot sands.

Archie, the skilled tracker, was the one who all but betrayed us. His
knee slipped on the seaweed, and he rolled off a boulder, bringing down
with him a clatter of small stones. We lay as still as mice, in terror
lest the man should have heard the noise and have come to look for the
cause. By-and-by when I ventured to raise my head above a flat-topped
stone I saw that he was undisturbed. The fire still burned, and he was
pacing round it. On the edge of the pools was an outcrop of red
sandstone much fissured by the sea. Here was an excellent
vantage-ground, and all three of us curled behind it, with our eyes
just over the edge. The man was not twenty yards off, and I could see
clearly what manner of fellow he was. For one thing he was huge of
size, or so he seemed to me in the half-light. He wore nothing but a
shirt and trousers, and I could hear by the flap of his feet on the
sand that he was barefoot.

Suddenly Tam Dyke gave a gasp of astonishment. “Gosh, it’s the black
minister!” he said.

It was indeed a black man, as we saw when the moon came out of a cloud.
His head was on his breast, and he walked round the fire with measured,
regular steps. At intervals he would stop and raise both hands to the
sky, and bend his body in the direction of the moon. But he never
uttered a word.

“It’s magic,” said Archie. “He’s going to raise Satan. We must bide
here and see what happens, for he’ll grip us if we try to go back. The
moon’s ower high.”

The procession continued as if to some slow music. I had been in no
fear of the adventure back there by our cave; but now that I saw the
thing from close at hand, my courage began to ebb. There was something
desperately uncanny about this great negro, who had shed his clerical
garments, and was now practising some strange magic alone by the sea. I
had no doubt it was the black art, for there was that in the air and
the scene which spelled the unlawful. As we watched, the circles
stopped, and the man threw something on the fire. A thick smoke rose of
which we could feel the aromatic scent, and when it was gone the flame
burned with a silvery blueness like moonlight. Still no sound came from
the minister, but he took something from his belt, and began to make
odd markings in the sand between the inner circle and the fire. As he
turned, the moon gleamed on the implement, and we saw it was a great
knife.

We were now scared in real earnest. Here were we, three boys, at night
in a lonely place a few yards from a savage with a knife. The adventure
was far past my liking, and even the intrepid Archie was having qualms,
if I could judge from his set face. As for Tam, his teeth were
chattering like a threshing-mill.

Suddenly I felt something soft and warm on the rock at my right hand. I
felt again, and, lo! it was the man’s clothes. There were his boots and
socks, his minister’s coat and his minister’s hat.

This made the predicament worse, for if we waited till he finished his
rites we should for certain be found by him. At the same time, to
return over the boulders in the bright moonlight seemed an equally sure
way to discovery. I whispered to Archie, who was for waiting a little
longer. “Something may turn up,” he said. It was always his way.

I do not know what would have turned up, for we had no chance of
testing it. The situation had proved too much for the nerves of Tam
Dyke. As the man turned towards us in his bowings and bendings, Tam
suddenly sprang to his feet and shouted at him a piece of schoolboy
rudeness then fashionable in Kirkcaple.

“Wha called ye partan-face, my bonny man?” Then, clutching his lantern,
he ran for dear life, while Archie and I raced at his heels. As I
turned I had a glimpse of a huge figure, knife in hand, bounding
towards us.

Though I only saw it in the turn of a head, the face stamped itself
indelibly upon my mind. It was black, black as ebony, but it was
different from the ordinary negro. There were no thick lips and flat
nostrils; rather, if I could trust my eyes, the nose was high-bridged,
and the lines of the mouth sharp and firm. But it was distorted into an
expression of such a devilish fury and amazement that my heart became
like water.

We had a start, as I have said, of some twenty or thirty yards. Among
the boulders we were not at a great disadvantage, for a boy can flit
quickly over them, while a grown man must pick his way. Archie, as
ever, kept his wits the best of us. “Make straight for the burn,” he
shouted in a hoarse whisper; we’ll beat him on the slope.”

We passed the boulders and slithered over the outcrop of red rock and
the patches of sea-pink till we reached the channel of the Dyve water,
which flows gently among pebbles after leaving the gully. Here for the
first time I looked back and saw nothing. I stopped involuntarily, and
that halt was nearly my undoing. For our pursuer had reached the burn
before us, but lower down, and was coming up its bank to cut us off.

At most times I am a notable coward, and in these days I was still more
of one, owing to a quick and easily-heated imagination. But now I think
I did a brave thing, though more by instinct than resolution. Archie
was running first, and had already splashed through the burn; Tam came
next, just about to cross, and the black man was almost at his elbow.
Another second and Tam would have been in his clutches had I not yelled
out a warning and made straight up the bank of the burn. Tam fell into
the pool—I could hear his spluttering cry—but he got across; for I
heard Archie call to him, and the two vanished into the thicket which
clothes all the left bank of the gully. The pursuer, seeing me on his
own side of the water, followed straight on; and before I knew it had
become a race between the two of us.

I was hideously frightened, but not without hope, for the screes and
shelves of this right side of the gully were known to me from many a
day’s exploring. I was light on my feet and uncommonly sound in wind,
being by far the best long-distance runner in Kirkcaple. If I could
only keep my lead till I reached a certain corner I knew of, I could
outwit my enemy; for it was possible from that place to make a detour
behind a waterfall and get into a secret path of ours among the bushes.
I flew up the steep screes, not daring to look round; but at the top,
where the rocks begin, I had a glimpse of my pursuer. The man could
run. Heavy in build though he was he was not six yards behind me, and I
could see the white of his eyes and the red of his gums. I saw
something else—a glint of white metal in his hand. He still had his
knife.

Fear sent me up the rocks like a seagull, and I scrambled and leaped,
making for the corner I knew of. Something told me that the pursuit was
slackening, and for a moment I halted to look round. A second time a
halt was nearly the end of me. A great stone flew through the air, and
took the cliff an inch from my head, half-blinding me with splinters.
And now I began to get angry. I pulled myself into cover, skirted a
rock till I came to my corner, and looked back for the enemy. There he
was scrambling by the way I had come, and making a prodigious clatter
among the stones. I picked up a loose bit of rock and hurled it with
all my force in his direction. It broke before it reached him, but a
considerable lump, to my joy, took him full in the face. Then my
terrors revived. I slipped behind the waterfall and was soon in the
thicket, and toiling towards the top.

I think this last bit was the worst in the race, for my strength was
failing, and I seemed to hear those horrid steps at my heels. My heart
was in my mouth as, careless of my best clothes, I tore through the
hawthorn bushes. Then I struck the path and, to my relief, came on
Archie and Tam, who were running slowly in desperate anxiety about my
fate. We then took hands and soon reached the top of the gully.

For a second we looked back. The pursuit had ceased, and far down the
burn we could hear the sounds as of some one going back to the sands.

“Your face is bleeding, Davie. Did he get near enough to hit you?”
Archie asked.

“He hit me with a stone. But I gave him better. He’s got a bleeding
nose to remember this night by.”

We did not dare take the road by the links, but made for the nearest
human habitation. This was a farm about half a mile inland, and when we
reached it we lay down by the stack-yard gate and panted.

 “I’ve lost my lantern,” said Tam. “The big black brute! See if I don’t
 tell my father.”

“Ye’ll do nothing of the kind,” said Archie fiercely. “He knows nothing
about us and can’t do us any harm. But if the story got out and he
found out who we were, he’d murder the lot of US.”

He made us swear secrecy, which we were willing enough to do, seeing
very clearly the sense in his argument. Then we struck the highroad and
trotted back at our best pace to Kirkcaple, fear of our families
gradually ousting fear of pursuit. In our excitement Archie and I
forgot about our Sabbath hats, reposing quietly below a whin bush on
the links.

We were not destined to escape without detection. As ill luck would
have it, Mr Murdoch had been taken ill with the stomach-ache after the
second psalm, and the congregation had been abruptly dispersed. My
mother had waited for me at the church door, and, seeing no signs of
her son, had searched the gallery. Then the truth came out, and, had I
been only for a mild walk on the links, retribution would have
overtaken my truantry. But to add to this I arrived home with a
scratched face, no hat, and several rents in my best trousers. I was
well cuffed and sent to bed, with the promise of full-dress
chastisement when my father should come home in the morning.

My father arrived before breakfast next day, and I was duly and soundly
whipped. I set out for school with aching bones to add to the usual
depression of Monday morning. At the corner of the Nethergate I fell in
with Archie, who was staring at a trap carrying two men which was
coming down the street. It was the Free Church minister—he had married
a rich wife and kept a horse—driving the preacher of yesterday to the
railway station. Archie and I were in behind a doorpost in a twinkling,
so that we could see in safety the last of our enemy. He was dressed in
minister’s clothes, with a heavy fur-coat and a brand new
yellow-leather Gladstone bag. He was talking loudly as he passed, and
the Free Church minister seemed to be listening attentively. I heard
his deep voice saying something about the “work of God in this place.”
But what I noticed specially—and the sight made me forget my aching
hinder parts—was that he had a swollen eye, and two strips of
sticking-plaster on his cheek.




CHAPTER II
FURTH! FORTUNE!


In this plain story of mine there will be so many wild doings ere the
end is reached, that I beg my reader’s assent to a prosaic digression.
I will tell briefly the things which happened between my sight of the
man on the Kirkcaple sands and my voyage to Africa. I continued for
three years at the burgh school, where my progress was less notable in
my studies than in my sports. One by one I saw my companions pass out
of idle boyhood and be set to professions. Tam Dyke on two occasions
ran off to sea in the Dutch schooners which used to load with coal in
our port; and finally his father gave him his will, and he was
apprenticed to the merchant service. Archie Leslie, who was a year my
elder, was destined for the law, so he left Kirkcaple for an Edinburgh
office, where he was also to take out classes at the college. I
remained on at school till I sat alone by myself in the highest class—a
position of little dignity and deep loneliness. I had grown a tall,
square-set lad, and my prowess at Rugby football was renowned beyond
the parishes of Kirkcaple and Portincross. To my father I fear I was a
disappointment. He had hoped for something in his son more bookish and
sedentary, more like his gentle, studious self.

On one thing I was determined: I should follow a learned profession.
The fear of being sent to an office, like so many of my schoolfellows,
inspired me to the little progress I ever made in my studies. I chose
the ministry, not, I fear, out of any reverence for the sacred calling,
but because my father had followed it before me. Accordingly I was sent
at the age of sixteen for a year’s finishing at the High School of
Edinburgh, and the following winter began my Arts course at the
university.

If Fate had been kinder to me, I think I might have become a scholar.
At any rate I was just acquiring a taste for philosophy and the dead
languages when my father died suddenly of a paralytic shock, and I had
to set about earning a living.

My mother was left badly off, for my poor father had never been able to
save much from his modest stipend. When all things were settled, it
turned out that she might reckon on an income of about fifty pounds a
year. This was not enough to live on, however modest the household, and
certainly not enough to pay for the colleging of a son. At this point
an uncle of hers stepped forward with a proposal. He was a well-to-do
bachelor, alone in the world, and he invited my mother to live with him
and take care of his house. For myself he proposed a post in some
mercantile concern, for he had much influence in the circles of
commerce. There was nothing for it but to accept gratefully. We sold
our few household goods, and moved to his gloomy house in Dundas
Street. A few days later he announced at dinner that he had found for
me a chance which might lead to better things.

“You see, Davie,” he explained, “you don’t know the rudiments of
business life. There’s no house in the country that would take you in
except as a common clerk, and you would never earn much more than a
hundred pounds a year all your days. If you want to better your future
you must go abroad, where white men are at a premium. By the mercy of
Providence I met yesterday an old friend, Thomas Mackenzie, who was
seeing his lawyer about an estate he is bidding for. He is the head of
one of the biggest trading and shipping concerns in the
world—Mackenzie, Mure, and Oldmeadows—you may have heard the name.
Among other things he has half the stores in South Africa, where they
sell everything from Bibles to fish-hooks. Apparently they like men
from home to manage the stores, and to make a long story short, when I
put your case to him, he promised you a place. I had a wire from him
this morning confirming the offer. You are to be assistant storekeeper
at—” (my uncle fumbled in his pocket, and then read from the yellow
slip) “at Blaauwildebeestefontein. There’s a mouthful for you.”

In this homely way I first heard of a place which was to be the theatre
of so many strange doings.

“It’s a fine chance for you,” my uncle continued. “You’ll only be
assistant at first, but when you have learned your job you’ll have a
store of your own. Mackenzie’s people will pay you three hundred pounds
a year, and when you get a store you’ll get a percentage on sales. It
lies with you to open up new trade among the natives. I hear that
Blaauw—something or other, is in the far north of the Transvaal, and I
see from the map that it is in a wild, hilly country. You may find gold
or diamonds up there, and come back and buy Portincross House.” My
uncle rubbed his hands and smiled cheerily.

Truth to tell I was both pleased and sad. If a learned profession was
denied me I vastly preferred a veld store to an Edinburgh office stool.
Had I not been still under the shadow of my father’s death I might have
welcomed the chance of new lands and new folk. As it was, I felt the
loneliness of an exile. That afternoon I walked on the Braid Hills, and
when I saw in the clear spring sunlight the coast of Fife, and
remembered Kirkcaple and my boyish days, I could have found it in me to
sit down and cry.

A fortnight later I sailed. My mother bade me a tearful farewell, and
my uncle, besides buying me an outfit and paying my passage money, gave
me a present of twenty sovereigns. “You’ll not be your mother’s son,
Davie,” were his last words, “if you don’t come home with it multiplied
by a thousand.” I thought at the time that I would give more than
twenty thousand pounds to be allowed to bide on the windy shores of
Forth.

I sailed from Southampton by an intermediate steamer, and went steerage
to save expense. Happily my acute homesickness was soon forgotten in
another kind of malady. It blew half a gale before we were out of the
Channel, and by the time we had rounded Ushant it was as dirty weather
as ever I hope to see. I lay mortal sick in my bunk, unable to bear the
thought of food, and too feeble to lift my head. I wished I had never
left home, but so acute was my sickness that if some one had there and
then offered me a passage back or an immediate landing on shore I
should have chosen the latter.

It was not till we got into the fair-weather seas around Madeira that I
recovered enough to sit on deck and observe my fellow-passengers. There
were some fifty of us in the steerage, mostly wives and children going
to join relations, with a few emigrant artisans and farmers. I early
found a friend in a little man with a yellow beard and spectacles, who
sat down beside me and remarked on the weather in a strong Scotch
accent. He turned out to be a Mr Wardlaw from Aberdeen, who was going
out to be a schoolmaster. He was a man of good education, who had taken
a university degree, and had taught for some years as an under-master
in a school in his native town. But the east winds had damaged his
lungs, and he had been glad to take the chance of a poorly paid country
school in the veld. When I asked him where he was going I was amazed to
be told, “Blaauwildebeestefontein.”

Mr Wardlaw was a pleasant little man, with a sharp tongue but a
cheerful temper. He laboured all day at primers of the Dutch and Kaffir
languages, but in the evening after supper he would walk with me on the
after-deck and discuss the future. Like me, he knew nothing of the land
he was going to, but he was insatiably curious, and he affected me with
his interest. “This place, Blaauwildebeestefontein,” he used to say,
“is among the Zoutpansberg mountains, and as far as I can see, not
above ninety miles from the railroad. It looks from the map a
well-watered country, and the Agent-General in London told me it was
healthy or I wouldn’t have taken the job. It seems we’ll be in the
heart of native reserves up there, for here’s a list of chiefs—”Mpefu,
Sikitola, Majinje, Magata; and there are no white men living to the
east of us because of the fever. The name means the ‘spring of the blue
wildebeeste,’ whatever fearsome animal that may be. It sounds like a
place for adventure, Mr Crawfurd. You’ll exploit the pockets of the
black men and I’ll see what I can do with their minds.” There was
another steerage passenger whom I could not help observing because of
my dislike of his appearance. He, too, was a little man, by name
Henriques, and in looks the most atrocious villain I have ever clapped
eyes on. He had a face the colour of French mustard—a sort of dirty
green—and bloodshot, beady eyes with the whites all yellowed with
fever. He had waxed moustaches, and a curious, furtive way of walking
and looking about him. We of the steerage were careless in our dress,
but he was always clad in immaculate white linen, with pointed, yellow
shoes to match his complexion. He spoke to no one, but smoked long
cheroots all day in the stern of the ship, and studied a greasy
pocket-book. Once I tripped over him in the dark, and he turned on me
with a snarl and an oath. I was short enough with him in return, and he
looked as if he could knife me.

“I’ll wager that fellow has been a slave-driver in his time,” I told Mr
Wardlaw, who said, “God pity his slaves, then.”

And now I come to the incident which made the rest of the voyage pass
all too soon for me, and foreshadowed the strange events which were to
come. It was the day after we crossed the Line, and the first-class
passengers were having deck sports. A tug-of-war had been arranged
between the three classes, and a half-dozen of the heaviest fellows in
the steerage, myself included, were invited to join. It was a blazing
hot afternoon, but on the saloon deck there were awnings and a cool
wind blowing from the bows. The first-class beat the second easily, and
after a tremendous struggle beat the steerage also. Then they regaled
us with iced-drinks and cigars to celebrate the victory.

I was standing at the edge of the crowd of spectators, when my eye
caught a figure which seemed to have little interest in our games. A
large man in clerical clothes was sitting on a deck-chair reading a
book. There was nothing novel about the stranger, and I cannot explain
the impulse which made me wish to see his face. I moved a few steps up
the deck, and then I saw that his skin was black. I went a little
farther, and suddenly he raised his eyes from his book and looked
round. It was the face of the man who had terrified me years ago on the
Kirkcaple shore.

I spent the rest of the day in a brown study. It was clear to me that
some destiny had prearranged this meeting. Here was this man travelling
prosperously as a first-class passenger with all the appurtenances of
respectability. I alone had seen him invoking strange gods in the
moonlight, I alone knew of the devilry in his heart, and I could not
but believe that some day or other there might be virtue in that
knowledge.

The second engineer and I had made friends, so I got him to consult the
purser’s list for the name of my acquaintance. He was down as the Rev.
John Laputa, and his destination was Durban. The next day being Sunday,
who should appear to address us steerage passengers but the black
minister. He was introduced by the captain himself, a notably pious
man, who spoke of the labours of his brother in the dark places of
heathendom. Some of us were hurt in our pride in being made the target
of a black man’s oratory. Especially Mr Henriques, whose skin spoke of
the tar-brush, protested with oaths against the insult. Finally he sat
down on a coil of rope, and spat scornfully in the vicinity of the
preacher.

For myself I was intensely curious, and not a little impressed. The
man’s face was as commanding as his figure, and his voice was the most
wonderful thing that ever came out of human mouth. It was full and
rich, and gentle, with the tones of a great organ. He had none of the
squat and preposterous negro lineaments, but a hawk nose like an Arab,
dark flashing eyes, and a cruel and resolute mouth. He was black as my
hat, but for the rest he might have sat for a figure of a Crusader. I
do not know what the sermon was about, though others told me that it
was excellent. All the time I watched him, and kept saying to myself,
“You hunted me up the Dyve Burn, but I bashed your face for you.”
Indeed, I thought I could see faint scars on his cheek.

The following night I had toothache, and could not sleep. It was too
hot to breathe under cover, so I got up, lit a pipe, and walked on the
after-deck to ease the pain. The air was very still, save for the whish
of water from the screws and the steady beat of the engines. Above, a
great yellow moon looked down on me, and a host of pale stars.

The moonlight set me remembering the old affair of the Dyve Burn, and
my mind began to run on the Rev. John Laputa. It pleased me to think
that I was on the track of some mystery of which I alone had the clue.
I promised myself to search out the antecedents of the minister when I
got to Durban, for I had a married cousin there, who might know
something of his doings. Then, as I passed by the companion-way to the
lower deck, I heard voices, and peeping over the rail, I saw two men
sitting in the shadow just beyond the hatch of the hold.

I thought they might be two of the sailors seeking coolness on the open
deck, when something in the figure of one of them made me look again.
The next second I had slipped back and stolen across the after-deck to
a point just above them. For the two were the black minister and that
ugly yellow villain, Henriques.

I had no scruples about eavesdropping, but I could make nothing of
their talk. They spoke low, and in some tongue which may have been
Kaffir or Portuguese, but was in any case unknown to me. I lay, cramped
and eager, for many minutes, and was just getting sick of it when a
familiar name caught my ear. Henriques said something in which I caught
the word “Blaauwildebeestefontein.” I listened intently, and there
could be no mistake. The minister repeated the name, and for the next
few minutes it recurred often in their talk. I went back stealthily to
bed, having something to make me forget my aching tooth. First of all,
Laputa and Henriques were allies. Second, the place I was bound for had
something to do with their schemes.

I said nothing to Mr Wardlaw, but spent the next week in the assiduous
toil of the amateur detective. I procured some maps and books from my
friend, the second engineer, and read all I could about
Blaauwildebeestefontein. Not that there was much to learn; but I
remember I had quite a thrill when I discovered from the chart of the
ship’s run one day that we were in the same latitude as that
uncouthly-named spot. I found out nothing, however, about Henriques or
the Rev. John Laputa. The Portuguese still smoked in the stern, and
thumbed his greasy notebook; the minister sat in his deck-chair, and
read heavy volumes from the ship’s library. Though I watched every
night, I never found them again together.

At Cape Town Henriques went ashore and did not return. The minister did
not budge from the ship the three days we lay in port, and, indeed, it
seemed to me that he kept his cabin. At any rate I did not see his
great figure on deck till we were tossing in the choppy seas round Cape
Agulhas. Sea-sickness again attacked me, and with short lulls during
our stoppages at Port Elizabeth and East London, I lay wretchedly in my
bunk till we sighted the bluffs of Durban harbour.

Here it was necessary for me to change my ship, for in the interests of
economy I was going by sea to Delagoa Bay, and thence by the cheap
railway journey into the Transvaal. I sought out my cousin, who lived
in a fine house on the Berea, and found a comfortable lodging for the
three days of my stay there. I made inquiries about Mr Laputa, but
could hear nothing. There was no native minister of that name, said my
cousin, who was a great authority on all native questions. I described
the man, but got no further light. No one had seen or heard of such a
being, “unless,” said my cousin, “he is one of those American Ethiopian
rascals.”

My second task was to see the Durban manager of the firm which I had
undertaken to serve. He was a certain Mr Colles, a big fat man, who
welcomed me in his shirt-sleeves, with a cigar in his mouth. He
received me pleasantly, and took me home to dinner with him.

“Mr Mackenzie has written about you,” he said. “I’ll be quite frank
with you, Mr Crawfurd. The firm is not exactly satisfied about the way
business has been going lately at Blaauwildebeestefontein. There’s a
grand country up there, and a grand opportunity for the man who can
take it. Japp, who is in charge, is an old man now and past his best,
but he has been long with the firm, and we don’t want to hurt his
feelings. When he goes, which must be pretty soon, you’ll have a good
chance of the place, if you show yourself an active young fellow.”

He told me a great deal more about Blaauwildebeestefontein, principally
trading details. Incidentally he let drop that Mr Japp had had several
assistants in the last few years. I asked him why they had left, and he
hesitated.

“It’s a lonely place, and they didn’t like the life. You see, there are
few white men near, and young fellows want society. They complained,
and were moved on. But the firm didn’t think the more of them.”

I told him I had come out with the new schoolmaster.

“Yes,” he said reflectively, “the school. That’s been vacant pretty
often lately. What sort of fellow is this Wardlaw? Will he stay, I
wonder?”

“From all accounts,” I said, “Blaauwildebeestefontein does not seem
popular.”

“It isn’t. That’s why we’ve got you out from home. The colonial-born
doesn’t find it fit in with his idea of comfort. He wants society, and
he doesn’t like too many natives. There’s nothing up there but natives
and a few back-veld Dutchmen with native blood in them. You fellows
from home are less set on an easy life, or you wouldn’t be here.”

There was something in Mr Colles’s tone which made me risk another
question.

“What’s the matter with the place? There must be more wrong with it
than loneliness to make everybody clear out. I have taken on this job,
and I mean to stick to it, so you needn’t be afraid to tell me.”

The manager looked at me sharply. “That’s the way to talk, my lad. You
look as if you had a stiff back, so I’ll be frank with you. There is
something about the place. It gives the ordinary man the jumps. What it
is, I don’t know, and the men who come back don’t know themselves. I
want you to find out for me. You’ll be doing the firm an enormous
service if you can get on the track of it. It may be the natives, or it
may be the takhaars, or it may be something else. Only old Japp can
stick it out, and he’s too old and doddering to care about moving. I
want you to keep your eyes skinned, and write privately to me if you
want any help. You’re not out here for your health, I can see, and
here’s a chance for you to get your foot on the ladder.

“Remember, I’m your friend,” he said to me again at the garden gate.
“Take my advice and lie very low. Don’t talk, don’t meddle with drink,
learn all you can of the native jabber, but don’t let on you understand
a word. You’re sure to get on the track of something. Good-bye, my
boy,” and he waved a fat hand to me.

That night I embarked on a cargo-boat which was going round the coast
to Delagoa Bay. It is a small world—at least for us far-wandering
Scots. For who should I find when I got on board but my old friend Tam
Dyke, who was second mate on the vessel? We wrung each other’s hands,
and I answered, as best I could, his questions about Kirkcaple. I had
supper with him in the cabin, and went on deck to see the moorings
cast.

Suddenly there was a bustle on the quay, and a big man with a handbag
forced his way up the gangway. The men who were getting ready to cast
off tried to stop him, but he elbowed his way forward, declaring he
must see the captain. Tam went up to him and asked civilly if he had a
passage taken. He admitted he had not, but said he would make it right
in two minutes with the captain himself. The Rev. John Laputa, for some
reason of his own, was leaving Durban with more haste than he had
entered it.

I do not know what passed with the captain, but the minister got his
passage right enough, and Tam was even turned out of his cabin to make
room for him. This annoyed my friend intensely.

“That black brute must be made of money, for he paid through the nose
for this, or I’m a Dutchman. My old man doesn’t take to his black
brethren any more than I do. Hang it all, what are we coming to, when
we’re turning into a blooming cargo boat for niggers?”

I had all too little of Tam’s good company, for on the afternoon of the
second day we reached the little town of Lourenco Marques. This was my
final landing in Africa, and I mind how eagerly I looked at the low,
green shores and the bush-covered slopes of the mainland. We were
landed from boats while the ship lay out in the bay, and Tam came
ashore with me to spend the evening. By this time I had lost every
remnant of homesickness. I had got a job before me which promised
better things than colleging at Edinburgh, and I was as keen to get up
country now as I had been loth to leave England. My mind being full of
mysteries, I scanned every Portuguese loafer on the quay as if he had
been a spy, and when Tam and I had had a bottle of Collates in a cafe I
felt that at last I had got to foreign parts and a new world.

Tam took me to supper with a friend of his, a Scot by the name of
Aitken, who was landing-agent for some big mining house on the Rand. He
hailed from Fife and gave me a hearty welcome, for he had heard my
father preach in his young days. Aitken was a strong, broad-shouldered
fellow who had been a sergeant in the Gordons, and during the war he
had done secret-service work in Delagoa. He had hunted, too, and traded
up and down Mozambique, and knew every dialect of the Kaffirs. He asked
me where I was bound for, and when I told him there was the same look
in his eyes as I had seen with the Durban manager.

“You’re going to a rum place, Mr Crawfurd,” he said.

“So I’m told. Do you know anything about it? You’re not the first who
has looked queer when I’ve spoken the name.”

“I’ve never been there,” he said, “though I’ve been pretty near it from
the Portuguese side. That’s the funny thing about
Blaauwildebeestefontein. Everybody has heard of it, and nobody knows
it.”

“I wish you would tell me what you have heard.”

“Well, the natives are queer up thereaways. There’s some kind of a holy
place which every Kaffir from Algoa Bay to the Zambesi and away beyond
knows about. When I’ve been hunting in the bush-veld I’ve often met
strings of Kaffirs from hundreds of miles distant, and they’ve all been
going or coming from Blaauwildebeestefontein. It’s like Mecca to the
Mohammedans, a place they go to on pilgrimage. I’ve heard of an old man
up there who is believed to be two hundred years old. Anyway, there’s
some sort of great witch or wizard living in the mountains.”

Aitken smoked in silence for a time; then he said, “I’ll tell you
another thing. I believe there’s a diamond mine. I’ve often meant to go
up and look for it.”

Tam and I pressed him to explain, which he did slowly after his
fashion.

“Did you ever hear of I.D.B.—illicit diamond broking?” he asked me.
“Well, it’s notorious that the Kaffirs on the diamond fields get away
with a fair number of stones, and they are bought by Jew and Portuguese
traders. It’s against the law to deal in them, and when I was in the
intelligence here we used to have a lot of trouble with the vermin. But
I discovered that most of the stones came from natives in one part of
the country—more or less round Blaauwildebeestefontein—and I see no
reason to think that they had all been stolen from Kimberley or the
Premier. Indeed some of the stones I got hold of were quite different
from any I had seen in South Africa before. I shouldn’t wonder if the
Kaffirs in the Zoutpansberg had struck some rich pipe, and had the
sense to keep quiet about it. Maybe some day I’ll take a run up to see
you and look into the matter.”

After this the talk turned on other topics till Tam, still nursing his
grievance, asked a question on his own account. “Did you ever come
across a great big native parson called Laputa? He came on board as we
were leaving Durban, and I had to turn out of my cabin for him.” Tam
described him accurately but vindictively, and added that “he was sure
he was up to no good.”

Aitken shook his head. “No, I don’t know the man. You say he landed
here? Well, I’ll keep a look-out for him. Big native parsons are not so
common.”

Then I asked about Henriques, of whom Tam knew nothing. I described his
face, his clothes, and his habits. Aitken laughed uproariously.

“Tut, my man, most of the subjects of his Majesty the King of Portugal
would answer to that description. If he’s a rascal, as you think, you
may be certain he’s in the I.D.B. business, and if I’m right about
Blaauwildebeestefontein you’ll likely have news of him there some time
or other. Drop me a line if he comes, and I’ll get on to his record.”

I saw Tam off in the boat with a fairly satisfied mind. I was going to
a place with a secret, and I meant to find it out. The natives round
Blaauwildebeestefontein were queer, and diamonds were suspected
somewhere in the neighbourhood.

Henriques had something to do with the place, and so had the Rev. John
Laputa, about whom I knew one strange thing. So did Tam by the way, but
he had not identified his former pursuer, and I had told him nothing. I
was leaving two men behind me, Colles at Durban and Aitken at Lourenco
Marques, who would help me if trouble came. Things were shaping well
for some kind of adventure.

The talk with Aitken had given Tam an inkling of my thoughts. His last
words to me were an appeal to let him know if there was any fun going.

“I can see you’re in for a queer job. Promise to let me hear from you
if there’s going to be a row, and I’ll come up country, though I should
have to desert the service. Send us a letter to the agents at Durban in
case we should be in port. You haven’t forgotten the Dyve Burn, Davie?”




CHAPTER III
BLAAUWILDEBEESTEFONTEIN


The Pilgrim’s Progress had been the Sabbath reading of my boyhood, and
as I came in sight of Blaauwildebeestefontein a passage ran in my head.
It was that which tells how Christian and Hopeful, after many perils of
the way, came to the Delectable Mountains, from which they had a
prospect of Canaan. After many dusty miles by rail, and a weariful
journey in a Cape-cart through arid plains and dry and stony gorges, I
had come suddenly into a haven of green. The Spring of the Blue
Wildebeeste was a clear rushing mountain torrent, which swirled over
blue rocks into deep fern-fringed pools. All around was a tableland of
lush grass with marigolds and arum lilies instead of daisies and
buttercups. Thickets of tall trees dotted the hill slopes and patched
the meadows as if some landscape-gardener had been at work on them.
Beyond, the glen fell steeply to the plains, which ran out in a faint
haze to the horizon. To north and south I marked the sweep of the Berg,
now rising high to a rocky peak and now stretching in a level rampart
of blue. On the very edge of the plateau where the road dipped for the
descent stood the shanties of Blaauwildebeestefontein. The fresh hill
air had exhilarated my mind, and the aromatic scent of the evening gave
the last touch of intoxication. Whatever serpent might lurk in it, it
was a veritable Eden I had come to.

Blaauwildebeestefontein had no more than two buildings of civilized
shape; the store, which stood on the left side of the river, and the
schoolhouse opposite. For the rest, there were some twenty native huts,
higher up the slope, of the type which the Dutch call _rondavels_. The
schoolhouse had a pretty garden, but the store stood bare in a patch of
dust with a few outhouses and sheds beside it. Round the door lay a few
old ploughs and empty barrels, and beneath a solitary blue gum was a
wooden bench with a rough table. Native children played in the dust,
and an old Kaffir squatted by the wall.

My few belongings were soon lifted from the Cape-cart, and I entered
the shop. It was the ordinary pattern of up-country store—a bar in one
corner with an array of bottles, and all round the walls tins of canned
food and the odds and ends of trade. The place was empty, and a cloud
of flies buzzed over the sugar cask.

Two doors opened at the back, and I chose the one to the right. I found
myself in a kind of kitchen with a bed in one corner, and a litter of
dirty plates on the table. On the bed lay a man, snoring heavily. I
went close to him, and found an old fellow with a bald head, clothed
only in a shirt and trousers. His face was red and swollen, and his
breath came in heavy grunts. A smell of bad whisky hung over
everything. I had no doubt that this was Mr Peter Japp, my senior in
the store. One reason for the indifferent trade at
Blaauwildebeestefontein was very clear to me: the storekeeper was a
sot.

I went back to the shop and tried the other door. It was a bedroom too,
but clean and pleasant. A little native girl—Zeeta, I found they called
her—was busy tidying it up, and when I entered she dropped me a curtsy.
“This is your room, Baas,” she said in very good English in reply to my
question. The child had been well trained somewhere, for there was a
cracked dish full of oleander blossom on the drawers’-head, and the
pillow-slips on the bed were as clean as I could wish. She brought me
water to wash, and a cup of strong tea, while I carried my baggage
indoors and paid the driver of the cart. Then, having cleaned myself
and lit a pipe, I walked across the road to see Mr Wardlaw.

I found the schoolmaster sitting under his own fig-tree reading one of
his Kaffir primers. Having come direct by rail from Cape Town, he had
been a week in the place, and ranked as the second oldest white
resident.

“Yon’s a bonny chief you’ve got, Davie,” were his first words. “For
three days he’s been as fou as the Baltic.”

I cannot pretend that the misdeeds of Mr Japp greatly annoyed me. I had
the reversion of his job, and if he chose to play the fool it was all
in my interest. But the schoolmaster was depressed at the prospect of
such company. “Besides you and me, he’s the only white man in the
place. It’s a poor look-out on the social side.”

The school, it appeared, was the merest farce. There were only five
white children, belonging to Dutch farmers in the mountains. The native
side was more flourishing, but the mission schools at the locations got
most of the native children in the neighbourhood. Mr Wardlaw’s
educational zeal ran high. He talked of establishing a workshop and
teaching carpentry and blacksmith’s work, of which he knew nothing. He
rhapsodized over the intelligence of his pupils and bemoaned his
inadequate gift of tongues. “You and I, Davie,” he said, “must sit down
and grind at the business. It is to the interest of both of us. The
Dutch is easy enough. It’s a sort of kitchen dialect you can learn in a
fortnight. But these native languages are a stiff job. Sesuto is the
chief hereabouts, and I’m told once you’ve got that it’s easy to get
the Zulu. Then there’s the thing the Shangaans speak—Baronga, I think
they call it. I’ve got a Christian Kaffir living up in one of the huts
who comes every morning to talk to me for an hour. You’d better join
me.”

I promised, and in the sweet-smelling dust crossed the road to the
store. Japp was still sleeping, so I got a bowl of mealie porridge from
Zeeta and went to bed.

Japp was sober next morning and made me some kind of apology. He had
chronic lumbago, he said, and “to go on the bust” now and then was the
best cure for it. Then he proceeded to initiate me into my duties in a
tone of exaggerated friendliness. “I took a fancy to you the first time
I clapped eyes on you,” he said. “You and me will be good friends,
Crawfurd, I can see that. You’re a spirited young fellow, and you’ll
stand no nonsense. The Dutch about here are a slim lot, and the Kaffirs
are slimmer. Trust no man, that’s my motto. The firm know that, and
I’ve had their confidence for forty years.”

The first day or two things went well enough. There was no doubt that,
properly handled, a fine trade could be done in
Blaauwildebeestefontein. The countryside was crawling with natives, and
great strings used to come through from Shangaan territory on the way
to the Rand mines. Besides, there was business to be done with the
Dutch farmers, especially with the tobacco, which I foresaw could be
worked up into a profitable export. There was no lack of money either,
and we had to give very little credit, though it was often asked for. I
flung myself into the work, and in a few weeks had been all round the
farms and locations. At first Japp praised my energy, for it left him
plenty of leisure to sit indoors and drink. But soon he grew
suspicious, for he must have seen that I was in a fair way to oust him
altogether. He was very anxious to know if I had seen Colles in Durban,
and what the manager had said. “I have letters,” he told me a hundred
times, “from Mr Mackenzie himself praising me up to the skies. The firm
couldn’t get along without old Peter Japp, I can tell you.” I had no
wish to quarrel with the old man, so I listened politely to all he
said. But this did not propitiate him, and I soon found him so jealous
as to be a nuisance. He was Colonial-born and was always airing the
fact. He rejoiced in my rawness, and when I made a blunder would crow
over it for hours. “It’s no good, Mr Crawfurd; you new chums from
England may think yourselves mighty clever, but we men from the Old
Colony can get ahead of you every time. In fifty years you’ll maybe
learn a little about the country, but we know all about it before we
start.” He roared with laughter at my way of tying a _voorslag_, and he
made merry (no doubt with reason) on my management of a horse. I kept
my temper pretty well, but I own there were moments when I came near to
kicking Mr Japp.

The truth is he was a disgusting old ruffian. His character was shown
by his treatment of Zeeta. The poor child slaved all day and did two
men’s work in keeping the household going. She was an orphan from a
mission station, and in Japp’s opinion a creature without rights. Hence
he never spoke to her except with a curse, and used to cuff her thin
shoulders till my blood boiled. One day things became too much for my
temper. Zeeta had spilled half a glass of Japp’s whisky while tidying
up the room. He picked up a sjambok, and proceeded to beat her
unmercifully till her cries brought me on the scene. I tore the whip
from his hands, seized him by the scruff and flung him on a heap of
potato sacks, where he lay pouring out abuse and shaking with rage.
Then I spoke my mind. I told him that if anything of the sort happened
again I would report it at once to Mr Colles at Durban. I added that
before making my report I would beat him within an inch of his degraded
life. After a time he apologized, but I could see that thenceforth he
regarded me with deadly hatred.

 There was another thing I noticed about Mr Japp. He might brag about
 his knowledge of how to deal with natives, but to my mind his methods
 were a disgrace to a white man. Zeeta came in for oaths and blows, but
 there were other Kaffirs whom he treated with a sort of cringing
 friendliness. A big black fellow would swagger into the shop, and be
 received by Japp as if he were his long-lost brother. The two would
 collogue for hours; and though at first I did not understand the
 tongue, I could see that it was the white man who fawned and the black
 man who bullied. Once when Japp was away one of these fellows came
 into the store as if it belonged to him, but he went out quicker than
 he entered. Japp complained afterwards of my behaviour. “’Mwanga is a
 good friend of mine,” he said, “and brings us a lot of business. I’ll
 thank you to be civil to him the next time.” I replied very shortly
 that ’Mwanga or anybody else who did not mend his manners would feel
 the weight of my boot.

The thing went on, and I am not sure that he did not give the Kaffirs
drink on the sly. At any rate, I have seen some very drunk natives on
the road between the locations and Blaauwildebeestefontein, and some of
them I recognized as Japp’s friends. I discussed the matter with Mr
Wardlaw, who said, “I believe the old villain has got some sort of
black secret, and the natives know it, and have got a pull on him.” And
I was inclined to think he was right.

By-and-by I began to feel the lack of company, for Wardlaw was so full
of his books that he was of little use as a companion. So I resolved to
acquire a dog, and bought one from a prospector, who was stony-broke
and would have sold his soul for a drink. It was an enormous Boer
hunting-dog, a mongrel in whose blood ran mastiff and bulldog and
foxhound, and Heaven knows what beside. In colour it was a kind of
brindled red, and the hair on its back grew against the lie of the rest
of its coat. Some one had told me, or I may have read it, that a back
like this meant that a dog would face anything mortal, even to a
charging lion, and it was this feature which first caught my fancy. The
price I paid was ten shillings and a pair of boots, which I got at cost
price from stock, and the owner departed with injunctions to me to
beware of the brute’s temper. Colin—for so I named him—began his career
with me by taking the seat out of my breeches and frightening Mr
Wardlaw into a tree. It took me a stubborn battle of a fortnight to
break his vice, and my left arm to-day bears witness to the struggle.
After that he became a second shadow, and woe betide the man who had
dared to raise his hand to Colin’s master. Japp declared that the dog
was a devil, and Colin repaid the compliment with a hearty dislike.

With Colin, I now took to spending some of my ample leisure in
exploring the fastnesses of the Berg. I had brought out a shot-gun of
my own, and I borrowed a cheap Mauser sporting rifle from the store. I
had been born with a good eye and a steady hand, and very soon I became
a fair shot with a gun and, I believe, a really fine shot with the
rifle. The sides of the Berg were full of quail and partridge and bush
pheasant, and on the grassy plateau there was abundance of a bird not
unlike our own blackcock, which the Dutch called _korhaan_. But the
great sport was to stalk bush-buck in the thickets, which is a game in
which the hunter is at small advantage. I have been knocked down by a
wounded bush-buck ram, and but for Colin might have been badly damaged.
Once, in a kloof not far from the Letaba, I killed a fine leopard,
bringing him down with a single shot from a rocky shelf almost on the
top of Colin. His skin lies by my fireside as I write this tale. But it
was during the days I could spare for an expedition into the plains
that I proved the great qualities of my dog. There we had nobler game
to follow—wildebeest and hartebeest, impala, and now and then a koodoo.
At first I was a complete duffer, and shamed myself in Colin’s eyes.
But by-and-by I learned something of veld-craft: I learned how to
follow spoor, how to allow for the wind, and stalk under cover. Then,
when a shot had crippled the beast, Colin was on its track like a flash
to pull it down. The dog had the nose of a retriever, the speed of a
greyhound, and the strength of a bull-terrier. I blessed the day when
the wandering prospector had passed the store.

Colin slept at night at the foot of my bed, and it was he who led me to
make an important discovery. For I now became aware that I was being
subjected to constant espionage. It may have been going on from the
start, but it was not till my third month at Blaauwildebeestefontein
that I found it out. One night I was going to bed, when suddenly the
bristles rose on the dog’s back and he barked uneasily at the window. I
had been standing in the shadow, and as I stepped to the window to look
out I saw a black face disappear below the palisade of the backyard.
The incident was trifling, but it put me on my guard. The next night I
looked, but saw nothing. The third night I looked, and caught a glimpse
of a face almost pressed to the pane. Thereafter I put up the shutters
after dark, and shifted my bed to a part of the room out of line with
the window.

It was the same out of doors. I would suddenly be conscious, as I
walked on the road, that I was being watched. If I made as if to walk
into the roadside bush there would be a faint rustling, which told that
the watcher had retired. The stalking was brilliantly done, for I never
caught a glimpse of one of the stalkers. Wherever I went—on the road,
on the meadows of the plateau, or on the rugged sides of the Berg—it
was the same. I had silent followers, who betrayed themselves now and
then by the crackling of a branch, and eyes were always looking at me
which I could not see. Only when I went down to the plains did the
espionage cease. This thing annoyed Colin desperately, and his walks
abroad were one continuous growl. Once, in spite of my efforts, he
dashed into the thicket, and a squeal of pain followed. He had got
somebody by the leg, and there was blood on the grass.

Since I came to Blaauwildebeestefontein I had forgotten the mystery I
had set out to track in the excitement of a new life and my sordid
contest with Japp. But now this espionage brought back my old
preoccupation. I was being watched because some person or persons
thought that I was dangerous. My suspicions fastened on Japp, but I
soon gave up that clue. It was my presence in the store that was a
danger to him, not my wanderings about the countryside. It might be
that he had engineered the espionage so as to drive me out of the place
in sheer annoyance; but I flattered myself that Mr Japp knew me too
well to imagine that such a game was likely to succeed.

The mischief was that I could not make out who the trackers were. I had
visited all the surrounding locations, and was on good enough terms
with all the chiefs. There was ’Mpefu, a dingy old fellow who had spent
a good deal of his life in a Boer gaol before the war. There was a
mission station at his place, and his people seemed to me to be well
behaved and prosperous. Majinje was a chieftainess, a little girl whom
nobody was allowed to see. Her location was a miserable affair, and her
tribe was yearly shrinking in numbers. Then there was Magata farther
north among the mountains. He had no quarrel with me, for he used to
give me a meal when I went out hunting in that direction; and once he
turned out a hundred of his young men, and I had a great battue of wild
dogs. Sikitola, the biggest of all, lived some distance out in the
flats. I knew less about him; but if his men were the trackers, they
must have spent most of their days a weary way from their kraal. The
Kaffirs in the huts at Blaauwildebeestefontein were mostly Christians,
and quiet, decent fellows, who farmed their little gardens, and
certainly preferred me to Japp. I thought at one time of riding into
Pietersdorp to consult the Native Commissioner. But I discovered that
the old man, who knew the country, was gone, and that his successor was
a young fellow from Rhodesia, who knew nothing about anything. Besides,
the natives round Blaauwildebeestefontein were well conducted, and
received few official visitations. Now and then a couple of Zulu
policemen passed in pursuit of some minor malefactor, and the collector
came for the hut-tax; but we gave the Government little work, and they
did not trouble their heads about us.

As I have said, the clues I had brought out with me to
Blaauwildebeestefontein began to occupy my mind again; and the more I
thought of the business the keener I grew. I used to amuse myself with
setting out my various bits of knowledge. There was first of all the
Rev. John Laputa, his doings on the Kirkcaple shore, his talk with
Henriques about Blaauwildebeestefontein, and his strange behaviour at
Durban. Then there was what Colles had told me about the place being
queer, how nobody would stay long either in the store or the
schoolhouse. Then there was my talk with Aitken at Lourenco Marques,
and his story of a great wizard in the neighbourhood to whom all
Kaffirs made pilgrimages, and the suspicion of a diamond pipe. Last and
most important, there was this perpetual spying on myself. It was as
clear as daylight that the place held some secret, and I wondered if
old Japp knew. I was fool enough one day to ask him about diamonds. He
met me with contemptuous laughter. “There’s your ignorant Britisher,”
he cried. “If you had ever been to Kimberley you would know the look of
a diamond country. You’re as likely to find diamonds here as ocean
pearls. But go out and scrape in the spruit if you like; you’ll maybe
find some garnets.”

I made cautious inquiries, too, chiefly through Mr Wardlaw, who was
becoming a great expert at Kaffir, about the existence of Aitken’s
wizard, but he could get no news. The most he found out was that there
was a good cure for fever among Sikitola’s men, and that Majinje, if
she pleased, could bring rain.

The upshot of it all was that, after much brooding, I wrote a letter to
Mr Colles, and, to make sure of its going, gave it to a missionary to
post in Pietersdorp. I told him frankly what Aitken had said, and I
also told him about the espionage. I said nothing about old Japp, for,
beast as he was, I did not want him at his age to be without a
livelihood.




CHAPTER IV
MY JOURNEY TO THE WINTER-VELD


A reply came from Colles, addressed not to me but to Japp. It seemed
that the old fellow had once suggested the establishment of a branch
store at a place out in the plains called Umvelos’, and the firm was
now prepared to take up the scheme. Japp was in high good humour, and
showed me the letter. Not a word was said of what I had written about,
only the bare details about starting the branch. I was to get a couple
of masons, load up two wagons with bricks and timber, and go down to
Umvelos’ and see the store built. The stocking of it and the
appointment of a storekeeper would be matter for further
correspondence. Japp was delighted, for, besides getting rid of me for
several weeks, it showed that his advice was respected by his
superiors. He went about bragging that the firm could not get on
without him, and was inclined to be more insolent to me than usual in
his new self-esteem. He also got royally drunk over the head of it.

I confess I was hurt by the manager’s silence on what seemed to me more
vital matters. But I soon reflected that if he wrote at all he would
write direct to me, and I eagerly watched for the post-runner. No
letter came, however, and I was soon too busy with preparations to look
for one. I got the bricks and timber from Pietersdorp, and hired two
Dutch masons to run the job. The place was not very far from Sikitola’s
kraal, so there would be no difficulty about native helpers. Having my
eyes open for trade, I resolved to kill two birds with one stone. It
was the fashion among the old-fashioned farmers on the high-veld to
drive the cattle down into the bush-veld—which they call the
winter-veld—for winter pasture. There is no fear of red-water about
that season, and the grass of the plains is rich and thick compared
with the uplands. I discovered that some big droves were passing on a
certain day, and that the owners and their families were travelling
with them in wagons. Accordingly I had a light _naachtmaal_ fitted up
as a sort of travelling store, and with my two wagons full of building
material joined the caravan. I hoped to do good trade in selling little
luxuries to the farmers on the road and at Umvelos’.

It was a clear cold morning when we started down the Berg. At first my
hands were full with the job of getting my heavy wagons down the
awesome precipice which did duty as a highway. We locked the wheels
with chains, and tied great logs of wood behind to act as brakes.
Happily my drivers knew their business, but one of the Boer wagons got
a wheel over the edge, and it was all that ten men could do to get it
back again.

After that the road was easier, winding down the side of a slowly
opening glen. I rode beside the wagons, and so heavenly was the weather
that I was content with my own thoughts. The sky was clear blue, the
air warm, yet with a wintry tonic in it, and a thousand aromatic scents
came out of the thickets. The pied birds called “Kaffir queens”
fluttered across the path. Below, the Klein Labongo churned and foamed
in a hundred cascades. Its waters were no more the clear grey of the
“Blue Wildebeeste’s Spring,” but growing muddy with its approach to the
richer soil of the plains.

Oxen travel slow, and we outspanned that night half a day’s march short
of Umvelos’. I spent the hour before sunset lounging and smoking with
the Dutch farmers. At first they had been silent and suspicious of a
newcomer, but by this time I talked their taal fluently, and we were
soon on good terms. I recall a discussion arising about a black thing
in a tree about five hundred yards away. I thought it was an aasvogel,
but another thought it was a baboon. Whereupon the oldest of the party,
a farmer called Coetzee, whipped up his rifle and, apparently without
sighting, fired. A dark object fell out of the branch, and when we
reached it we found it a _baviaan_[1] sure enough, shot through the
head. “Which side are you on in the next war?” the old man asked me,
and, laughing, I told him “Yours.”

After supper, the ingredients of which came largely from my
_naachtmaal_, we sat smoking and talking round the fire, the women and
children being snug in the covered wagons. The Boers were honest
companionable fellows, and when I had made a bowl of toddy in the
Scotch fashion to keep out the evening chill, we all became excellent
friends. They asked me how I got on with Japp. Old Coetzee saved me the
trouble of answering, for he broke in with _Skellum_! _Skellum_![2] I
asked him his objection to the storekeeper, but he would say nothing
beyond that he was too thick with the natives. I fancy at some time Mr
Japp had sold him a bad plough.

We spoke of hunting, and I heard long tales of exploits—away on the
Limpopo, in Mashonaland, on the Sabi and in the Lebombo. Then we verged
on politics, and I listened to violent denunciations of the new land
tax. These were old residenters, I reflected, and I might learn perhaps
something of value. So very carefully I repeated a tale I said I had
heard at Durban of a great wizard somewhere in the Berg, and asked if
any one knew of it. They shook their heads. The natives had given up
witchcraft and big medicine, they said, and were more afraid of a
parson or a policeman than any witch-doctor. Then they were starting on
reminiscences, when old Coetzee, who was deaf, broke in and asked to
have my question repeated.

“Yes,” he said, “I know. It is in the Rooirand. There is a devil dwells
there.”

I could get no more out of him beyond the fact that there was certainly
a great devil there. His grandfather and father had seen it, and he
himself had heard it roaring when he had gone there as a boy to hunt.
He would explain no further, and went to bed.

Next morning, close to Sikitola’s kraal, I bade the farmers good-bye,
after telling them that there would be a store in my wagon for three
weeks at Umvelos’ if they wanted supplies. We then struck more to the
north towards our destination. As soon as they had gone I had out my
map and searched it for the name old Coetzee had mentioned. It was a
very bad map, for there had been no surveying east of the Berg, and
most of the names were mere guesses. But I found the word “Rooirand”
marking an eastern continuation of the northern wall, and probably set
down from some hunter’s report. I had better explain here the chief
features of the country, for they bulk largely in my story. The Berg
runs north and south, and from it run the chief streams which water the
plain. They are, beginning from the south, the Olifants, the Groot
Letaba, the Letsitela, the Klein Letaba, and the Klein Labongo, on
which stands Blaauwildebeestefontein. But the greatest river of the
plain, into which the others ultimately flow, is the Groot Labongo,
which appears full-born from some subterranean source close to the
place called Umvelos’. North from Blaauwildebeestefontein the Berg runs
for some twenty miles, and then makes a sharp turn eastward, becoming,
according to my map, the Rooirand.

I pored over these details, and was particularly curious about the
Great Labongo. It seemed to me unlikely that a spring in the bush could
produce so great a river, and I decided that its source must lie in the
mountains to the north. As well as I could guess, the Rooirand, the
nearest part of the Berg, was about thirty miles distant. Old Coetzee
had said that there was a devil in the place, but I thought that if it
were explored the first thing found would be a fine stream of water.

We got to Umvelos’ after midday, and outspanned for our three weeks’
work. I set the Dutchmen to unload and clear the ground for
foundations, while I went off to Sikitola to ask for labourers. I got a
dozen lusty blacks, and soon we had a business-like encampment, and the
work went on merrily. It was rough architecture and rougher masonry.
All we aimed at was a two-roomed shop with a kind of outhouse for
stores. I was architect, and watched the marking out of the foundations
and the first few feet of the walls. Sikitola’s people proved
themselves good helpers, and most of the building was left to them,
while the Dutchmen worked at the carpentry. Bricks ran short before we
got very far, and we had to set to brick-making on the bank of the
Labongo, and finish off the walls with green bricks, which gave the
place a queer piebald look.

I was not much of a carpenter, and there were plenty of builders
without me, so I found a considerable amount of time on my hands. At
first I acted as shopkeeper in the _naachtmaal_, but I soon cleared out
my stores to the Dutch farmers and the natives. I had thought of going
back for more, and then it occurred to me that I might profitably give
some of my leisure to the Rooirand. I could see the wall of the
mountains quite clear to the north, within an easy day’s ride. So one
morning I packed enough food for a day or two, tied my sleeping-bag on
my saddle, and set off to explore, after appointing the elder of the
Dutchmen foreman of the job in my absence.

It was very hot jogging along the native path with the eternal
olive-green bush around me. Happily there was no fear of losing the
way, for the Rooirand stood very clear in front, and slowly, as I
advanced, I began to make out the details of the cliffs. At
luncheon-time, when I was about half-way, I sat down with my Zeiss
glass—my mother’s farewell gift—to look for the valley. But valley I
saw none. The wall—reddish purple it looked, and, I thought, of
porphyry—was continuous and unbroken. There were chimneys and fissures,
but none great enough to hold a river. The top was sheer cliff; then
came loose kranzes in tiers, like the seats in a gallery, and, below, a
dense thicket of trees. I raked the whole line for a break, but there
seemed none. “It’s a bad job for me,” I thought, “if there is no water,
for I must pass the night there.” The night was spent in a sheltered
nook at the foot of the rocks, but my horse and I went to bed without a
drink. My supper was some raisins and biscuits, for I did not dare to
run the risk of increasing my thirst. I had found a great bank of
_débris_ sloping up to the kranzes, and thick wood clothing all the
slope. The grass seemed wonderfully fresh, but of water there was no
sign. There was not even the sandy channel of a stream to dig in.

In the morning I had a difficult problem to face. Water I must find at
all costs, or I must go home. There was time enough for me to get back
without suffering much, but if so I must give up my explorations. This
I was determined not to do. The more I looked at these red cliffs the
more eager I was to find out their secret. There must be water
somewhere; otherwise how account for the lushness of the vegetation?

My horse was a veld pony, so I set him loose to see what he would do.
He strayed back on the path to Umvelos’. This looked bad, for it meant
that he did not smell water along the cliff front. If I was to find a
stream it must be on the top, and I must try a little mountaineering.

Then, taking my courage in both my hands, I decided. I gave my pony a
cut, and set him off on the homeward road. I knew he was safe to get
back in four or five hours, and in broad day there was little fear of
wild beasts attacking him. I had tied my sleeping bag on to the saddle,
and had with me but two pocketfuls of food. I had also fastened on the
saddle a letter to my Dutch foreman, bidding him send a native with a
spare horse to fetch me by the evening. Then I started off to look for
a chimney.

A boyhood spent on the cliffs at Kirkcaple had made me a bold cragsman,
and the porphyry of the Rooirand clearly gave excellent holds. But I
walked many weary miles along the cliff-foot before I found a feasible
road. To begin with, it was no light task to fight one’s way through
the dense undergrowth of the lower slopes. Every kind of thorn-bush lay
in wait for my skin, creepers tripped me up, high trees shut out the
light, and I was in constant fear lest a black _mamba_ might appear out
of the tangle. It grew very hot, and the screes above the thicket were
blistering to the touch. My tongue, too, stuck to the roof of my mouth
with thirst.

The first chimney I tried ran out on the face into nothingness, and I
had to make a dangerous descent. The second was a deep gully, but so
choked with rubble that after nearly braining myself I desisted. Still
going eastwards, I found a sloping ledge which took me to a platform
from which ran a crack with a little tree growing in it. My glass
showed me that beyond this tree the crack broadened into a clearly
defined chimney which led to the top. If I can once reach that tree, I
thought, the battle is won. The crack was only a few inches wide, large
enough to let in an arm and a foot, and it ran slantwise up a
perpendicular rock. I do not think I realized how bad it was till I had
gone too far to return. Then my foot jammed, and I paused for breath
with my legs and arms cramping rapidly. I remember that I looked to the
west, and saw through the sweat which kept dropping into my eyes that
about half a mile off a piece of cliff which looked unbroken from the
foot had a fold in it to the right. The darkness of the fold showed me
that it was a deep, narrow gully. However, I had no time to think of
this, for I was fast in the middle of my confounded crack. With immense
labour I found a chockstone above my head, and managed to force my foot
free. The next few yards were not so difficult, and then I stuck once
more.

For the crack suddenly grew shallow as the cliff bulged out above me. I
had almost given up hope, when I saw that about three feet above my
head grew the tree. If I could reach it and swing out I might hope to
pull myself up to the ledge on which it grew. I confess it needed all
my courage, for I did not know but that the tree might be loose, and
that it and I might go rattling down four hundred feet. It was my only
hope, however, so I set my teeth, and wriggling up a few inches, made a
grab at it. Thank God it held, and with a great effort I pulled my
shoulder over the ledge, and breathed freely.

My difficulties were not ended, but the worst was past. The rest of the
gully gave me good and safe climbing, and presently a very limp and
weary figure lay on the cliff-top. It took me many minutes to get back
my breath and to conquer the faintness which seized me as soon as the
need for exertion was over.

When I scrambled to my feet and looked round, I saw a wonderful
prospect. It was a plateau like the high-veld, only covered with
bracken and little bushes like hazels. Three or four miles off the
ground rose, and a shallow vale opened. But in the foreground, half a
mile or so distant, a lake lay gleaming in the sun.

I could scarcely believe my eyes as I ran towards it, and doubts of a
mirage haunted me. But it was no mirage, but a real lake, perhaps three
miles in circumference, with bracken-fringed banks, a shore of white
pebbles, and clear deep blue water. I drank my fill, and then stripped
and swam in the blessed coolness. After that I ate some luncheon, and
sunned myself on a flat rock. “I have discovered the source of the
Labongo,” I said to myself. “I will write to the Royal Geographical
Society, and they will give me a medal.”

I walked round the lake to look for an outlet. A fine mountain stream
came in at the north end, and at the south end, sure enough, a
considerable river debauched. My exploring zeal redoubled, and I
followed its course in a delirium of expectation. It was a noble
stream, clear as crystal, and very unlike the muddy tropical Labongo at
Umvelos’. Suddenly, about a quarter of a mile from the lake, the land
seemed to grow over it, and with a swirl and a hollow roar, it
disappeared into a mighty pot-hole. I walked a few steps on, and from
below my feet came the most uncanny rumbling and groaning. Then I knew
what old Coetzee’s devil was that howled in the Rooirand.

Had I continued my walk to the edge of the cliff, I might have learned
a secret which would have stood me in good stead later. But the descent
began to make me anxious, and I retraced my steps to the top of the
chimney whence I had come. I was resolved that nothing would make me
descend by that awesome crack, so I kept on eastward along the top to
look for a better way. I found one about a mile farther on, which,
though far from easy, had no special risks save from the appalling
looseness of the _débris_. When I got down at length, I found that it
was near sunset. I went to the place I had bidden my native look for me
at, but, as I had feared, there was no sign of him. So, making the best
of a bad job, I had supper and a pipe, and spent a very chilly night in
a hole among the boulders.

I got up at dawn stiff and cold, and ate a few raisins for breakfast.
There was no sign of horses, so I resolved to fill up the time in
looking for the fold of the cliff which, as I had seen from the
horrible crack of yesterday, contained a gully. It was a difficult job,
for to get the sidelong view of the cliff I had to scramble through the
undergrowth of the slopes again, and even a certain way up the kranzes.
At length I got my bearings, and fixed the place by some tall trees in
the bush. Then I descended and walked westwards.

Suddenly, as I neared the place, I heard the strangest sound coming
from the rocks. It was a deep muffled groaning, so eerie and unearthly
that for the moment I stood and shivered. Then I remembered my river of
yesterday. It must be above this place that it descended into the
earth, and in the hush of dawn the sound was naturally louder. No
wonder old Coetzee had been afraid of devils. It reminded me of the
lines in _Marmion_—

“Diving as if condemned to lave

Some demon’s subterranean cave,

Who, prisoned by enchanter’s spell,

Shakes the dark rock with groan and yell.”


While I was standing awestruck at the sound, I observed a figure moving
towards the cliffs. I was well in cover, so I could not have been
noticed. It was a very old man, very tall, but bowed in the shoulders,
who was walking slowly with bent head. He could not have been thirty
yards from me, so I had a clear view of his face. He was a native, but
of a type I had never seen before. A long white beard fell on his
breast, and a magnificent kaross of leopard skin covered his shoulders.
His face was seamed and lined and shrunken, so that he seemed as old as
Time itself.

Very carefully I crept after him, and found myself opposite the fold
where the gully was. There was a clear path through the jungle, a path
worn smooth by many feet. I followed it through the undergrowth and
over the screes till it turned inside the fold of the gully. And then
it stopped short. I was in a deep cleft, but in front was a slab of
sheer rock. Above, the gully looked darker and deeper, but there was
this great slab to pass. I examined the sides, but they were sheer rock
with no openings.

Had I had my wits about me, I would have gone back and followed the
spoor, noting where it stopped. But the whole thing looked black magic
to me; my stomach was empty and my enterprise small. Besides, there was
the terrible moaning of the imprisoned river in my ears. I am ashamed
to confess it, but I ran from that gully as if the devil and all his
angels had been following me. Indeed, I did not slacken till I had put
a good mile between me and those uncanny cliffs. After that I set out
to foot it back. If the horses would not come to me I must go to them.

I walked twenty-five miles in a vile temper, enraged at my Dutchmen, my
natives, and everybody. The truth is, I had been frightened, and my
pride was sore about it. It grew very hot, the sand rose and choked me,
the mopani trees with their dull green wearied me, the “Kaffir queens”
and jays and rollers which flew about the path seemed to be there to
mock me. About half-way home I found a boy and two horses, and roundly
I cursed him. It seemed that my pony had returned right enough, and the
boy had been sent to fetch me. He had got half-way before sunset the
night before, and there he had stayed. I discovered from him that he
was scared to death, and did not dare go any nearer the Rooirand. It
was accursed, he said, for it was an abode of devils, and only wizards
went near it. I was bound to admit to myself that I could not blame
him. At last I had got on the track of something certain about this
mysterious country, and all the way back I wondered if I should have
the courage to follow it up.

[1] Baboon.

[2] Schelm: Rascal.




CHAPTER V
MR WARDLAW HAS A PREMONITION


A week later the building job was finished, I locked the door of the
new store, pocketed the key, and we set out for home. Sikitola was
entrusted with the general care of it, and I knew him well enough to be
sure that he would keep his people from doing mischief. I left my empty
wagons to follow at their leisure and rode on, with the result that I
arrived at Blaauwildebeestefontein two days before I was looked for.

I stabled my horse, and went round to the back to see Colin. (I had
left him at home in case of fights with native dogs, for he was an ill
beast in a crowd.) I found him well and hearty, for Zeeta had been
looking after him. Then some whim seized me to enter the store through
my bedroom window. It was open, and I crawled softly in to find the
room fresh and clean from Zeeta’s care. The door was ajar, and, hearing
voices, I peeped into the shop.

Japp was sitting on the counter talking in a low voice to a big
native—the same ’Mwanga whom I had bundled out unceremoniously. I
noticed that the outer door giving on the road was shut, a most unusual
thing in the afternoon. Japp had some small objects in his hand, and
the two were evidently arguing about a price. I had no intention at
first of eavesdropping, and was just about to push the door open, when
something in Japp’s face arrested me. He was up to no good, and I
thought it my business to wait.

The low tones went on for a little, both men talking in Kaffir, and
then Japp lifted up one of the little objects between finger and thumb.
It was a small roundish stone about the size of a bean, but even in
that half light there was a dull lustre in it.

At that I shoved the door open and went in. Both men started as if they
had been shot. Japp went as white as his mottled face permitted. “What
the—” he gasped, and he dropped the thing he was holding.

I picked it up, and laid it on the counter. “So,” I said, “diamonds, Mr
Japp. You have found the pipe I was looking for. I congratulate you.”

My words gave the old ruffian his cue. “Yes, yes,” he said, “I have, or
rather my friend ’Mwanga has. He has just been telling me about it.”

The Kaffir looked miserably uncomfortable. He shifted from one leg to
the other, casting longing glances at the closed door.

“I tink I go,” he said. “Afterwards we will speak more.”

I told him I thought he had better go, and opened the door for him.
Then I bolted it again, and turned to Mr Japp.

“So that’s your game,” I said. “I thought there was something funny
about you, but I didn’t know it was I.D.B. you were up to.”

He looked as if he could kill me. For five minutes he cursed me with a
perfection of phrase which I had thought beyond him. It was no I.D.B.,
he declared, but a pipe which ’Mwanga had discovered. “In this kind of
country?” I said, quoting his own words. “Why, you might as well expect
to find ocean pearls as diamonds. But scrape in the spruit if you like;
you’ll maybe find some garnets.”

He choked down his wrath, and tried a new tack. “What will you take to
hold your tongue? I’ll make you a rich man if you’ll come in with me.”
And then he started with offers which showed that he had been making a
good thing out of the traffic.

I stalked over to him, and took him by the shoulder. “You old
reprobate,” I roared, “if you breathe such a proposal to me again, I’ll
tie you up like a sack and carry you to Pietersdorp.”

At this he broke down and wept maudlin tears, disgusting to witness. He
said he was an old man who had always lived honestly, and it would
break his heart if his grey hairs were to be disgraced. As he sat
rocking himself with his hands over his face, I saw his wicked little
eyes peering through the slits of his fingers to see what my next move
would be.

“See here, Mr Japp,” I said, “I’m not a police spy, and it’s no
business of mine to inform against you. I’m willing to keep you out of
gaol, but it must be on my own conditions. The first is that you resign
this job and clear out. You will write to Mr Colles a letter at my
dictation, saying that you find the work too much for you. The second
is that for the time you remain here the diamond business must utterly
cease. If ’Mwanga or anybody like him comes inside the store, and if I
get the slightest hint that you’re back at the trade, in you go to
Pietersdorp. I’m not going to have my name disgraced by being
associated with you. The third condition is that when you leave this
place you go clear away. If you come within twenty miles of
Blaauwildebeestefontein and I find you, I will give you up.”

He groaned and writhed at my terms, but in the end accepted them. He
wrote the letter, and I posted it. I had no pity for the old scamp, who
had feathered his nest well. Small wonder that the firm’s business was
not as good as it might be, when Japp was giving most of his time to
buying diamonds from native thieves. The secret put him in the power of
any Kaffir who traded him a stone. No wonder he cringed to ruffians
like ’Mwanga.

The second thing I did was to shift my quarters. Mr Wardlaw had a spare
room which he had offered me before, and now I accepted it. I wanted to
be no more mixed up with Japp than I could help, for I did not know
what villainy he might let me in for. Moreover, I carried Zeeta with
me, being ashamed to leave her at the mercy of the old bully. Japp went
up to the huts and hired a slattern to mind his house, and then drank
heavily for three days to console himself.

That night I sat smoking with Mr Wardlaw in his sitting-room, where a
welcome fire burned, for the nights on the Berg were chilly. I remember
the occasion well for the queer turn the conversation took. Wardlaw, as
I have said, had been working like a slave at the Kaffir tongues. I
talked a kind of Zulu well enough to make myself understood, and I
could follow it when spoken; but he had real scholarship in the thing,
and knew all about the grammar and the different dialects. Further, he
had read a lot about native history, and was full of the doings of
Tchaka and Mosilikatse and Moshesh, and the kings of old. Having little
to do in the way of teaching, he had made up for it by reading
omnivorously. He used to borrow books from the missionaries, and he
must have spent half his salary in buying new ones.

To-night as he sat and puffed in his armchair, he was full of stories
about a fellow called Monomotapa. It seems he was a great black emperor
whom the Portuguese discovered about the sixteenth century. He lived to
the north in Mashonaland, and had a mountain full of gold. The
Portuguese did not make much of him, but they got his son and turned
him into a priest.

I told Wardlaw that he was most likely only a petty chief, whose
exploits were magnified by distance, the same as the caciques in
Mexico. But the schoolmaster would not accept this.

“He must have been a big man, Davie. You know that the old ruins in
Rhodesia, called Zimbabwe, were long believed to be Phoenician in
origin. I have a book here which tells all about them. But now it is
believed that they were built by natives. I maintain that the men who
could erect piles like that”—and he showed me a picture—”were something
more than petty chiefs.”

Presently the object of this conversation appeared. Mr Wardlaw thought
that we were underrating the capacity of the native. This opinion was
natural enough in a schoolmaster, but not in the precise form Wardlaw
put it. It was not his intelligence which he thought we underrated, but
his dangerousness. His reasons, shortly, were these: There were five or
six of them to every white man; they were all, roughly speaking, of the
same stock, with the same tribal beliefs; they had only just ceased
being a warrior race, with a powerful military discipline; and, most
important, they lived round the rim of the high-veld plateau, and if
they combined could cut off the white man from the sea. I pointed out
to him that it would only be a matter of time before we opened the road
again. “Ay,” he said, “but think of what would happen before then.
Think of the lonely farms and the little dorps wiped out of the map. It
would be a second and bloodier Indian mutiny. “I’m not saying it’s
likely,” he went on, “but I maintain it’s possible. Supposing a second
Tchaka turned up, who could get the different tribes to work together.
It wouldn’t be so very hard to smuggle in arms. Think of the long,
unwatched coast in Gazaland and Tongaland. If they got a leader with
prestige enough to organize a crusade against the white man, I don’t
see what could prevent a rising.”

“We should get wind of it in time to crush it at the start,” I said.

“I’m not so sure. They are cunning fellows, and have arts that we know
nothing about. You have heard of native telepathy. They can send news
over a thousand miles as quick as the telegraph, and we have no means
of tapping the wires. If they ever combined they could keep it as
secret as the grave. My houseboy might be in the rising, and I would
never suspect it till one fine morning he cut my throat.”

“But they would never find a leader. If there was some exiled prince of
Tchaka’s blood, who came back like Prince Charlie to free his people,
there might be danger; but their royalties are fat men with top hats
and old frock-coats, who live in dirty locations.”

Wardlaw admitted this, but said that there might be other kinds of
leaders. He had been reading a lot about Ethiopianism, which educated
American negroes had been trying to preach in South Africa. He did not
see why a kind of bastard Christianity should not be the motive of a
rising. “The Kaffir finds it an easy job to mix up Christian emotion
and pagan practice. Look at Hayti and some of the performances in the
Southern States.”

Then he shook the ashes out of his pipe and leaned forward with a
solemn face. “I’ll admit the truth to you, Davie. I’m black afraid.”

He looked so earnest and serious sitting there with his short-sighted
eyes peering at me that I could not help being impressed.

“Whatever is the matter?” I asked. “Has anything happened?”

He shook his head. “Nothing I can put a name to. But I have a
presentiment that some mischief is afoot in these hills. I feel it in
my bones.”

I confess I was startled by these words. You must remember that I had
never given a hint of my suspicions to Mr Wardlaw beyond asking him if
a wizard lived in the neighbourhood—a question anybody might have put.
But here was the schoolmaster discovering for himself some mystery in
Blaauwildebeestefontein.

I tried to get at his evidence, but it was very little. He thought
there were an awful lot of blacks about. “The woods are full of them,”
he said. I gathered he did not imagine he was being spied on, but
merely felt that there were more natives about than could be explained.
“There’s another thing,” he said. “The native bairns have all left the
school. I’ve only three scholars left, and they are from Dutch farms. I
went to Majinje to find out what was up, and an old crone told me the
place was full of bad men. I tell you, Davie, there’s something
brewing, and that something is not good for us.”

There was nothing new to me in what Wardlaw had to tell, and yet that
talk late at night by a dying fire made me feel afraid for the second
time since I had come to Blaauwildebeestefontein. I had a clue and had
been on the look-out for mysteries, but that another should feel the
strangeness for himself made it seem desperately real to me. Of course
I scoffed at Mr Wardlaw’s fears. I could not have him spoiling all my
plans by crying up a native rising for which he had not a scrap of
evidence.

“Have you been writing to anybody?” I asked him.

He said that he had told no one, but he meant to, unless things got
better. “I haven’t the nerve for this job, Davie,” he said; “I’ll have
to resign. And it’s a pity, for the place suits my health fine. You see
I know too much, and I haven’t your whinstone nerve and total lack of
imagination.”

I told him that it was simply fancy, and came from reading too many
books and taking too little exercise. But I made him promise to say
nothing to anybody either by word of mouth or letter, without telling
me first. Then I made him a rummer of toddy and sent him to bed a
trifle comforted.

The first thing I did in my new room was to shift the bed into the
corner out of line with the window. There were no shutters, so I put up
an old table-top and jammed it between the window frames. Also, I
loaded my shot-gun and kept it by my bedside. Had Wardlaw seen these
preparations he might have thought more of my imagination and less of
my nerve. It was a real comfort to me to put out a hand in the darkness
and feel Colin’s shaggy coat.




CHAPTER VI
THE DRUMS BEAT AT SUNSET


Japp was drunk for the next day or two, and I had the business of the
store to myself. I was glad of this, for it gave me leisure to reflect
upon the various perplexities of my situation. As I have said, I was
really scared, more out of a sense of impotence than from dread of
actual danger. I was in a fog of uncertainty. Things were happening
around me which I could only dimly guess at, and I had no power to take
one step in defence. That Wardlaw should have felt the same without any
hint from me was the final proof that the mystery was no figment of my
nerves. I had written to Colles and got no answer. Now the letter with
Japp’s resignation in it had gone to Durban. Surely some notice would
be taken of that. If I was given the post, Colles was bound to consider
what I had said in my earlier letter and give me some directions.
Meanwhile it was my business to stick to my job till I was relieved.

A change had come over the place during my absence. The natives had
almost disappeared from sight. Except the few families living round
Blaauwildebeestefontein one never saw a native on the roads, and none
came into the store. They were sticking close to their locations, or
else they had gone after some distant business. Except a batch of three
Shangaans returning from the Rand, I had nobody in the store for the
whole of one day. So about four o’clock I shut it up, whistled on
Colin, and went for a walk along the Berg.

If there were no natives on the road, there were plenty in the bush. I
had the impression, of which Wardlaw had spoken, that the native
population of the countryside had suddenly been hugely increased. The
woods were simply _hotching_ with them. I was being spied on as before,
but now there were so many at the business that they could not all
conceal their tracks. Every now and then I had a glimpse of a black
shoulder or leg, and Colin, whom I kept on the leash, was half-mad with
excitement. I had seen all I wanted, and went home with a preoccupied
mind. I sat long on Wardlaw’s garden-seat, trying to puzzle out the
truth of this spying.

What perplexed me was that I had been left unmolested when I had gone
to Umvelos’. Now, as I conjectured, the secret of the neighbourhood,
whatever it was, was probably connected with the Rooirand. But when I
had ridden in that direction and had spent two days in exploring, no
one had troubled to watch me. I was quite certain about this, for my
eye had grown quick to note espionage, and it is harder for a spy to
hide in the spare bush of the flats than in the dense thickets on these
uplands.

The watchers, then, did not mind my fossicking round their sacred
place. Why, then, was I so closely watched in the harmless
neighbourhood of the store? I thought for a long time before an answer
occurred to me. The reason must be that going to the plains I was going
into native country and away from civilization. But
Blaauwildebeestefontein was near the frontier. There must be some dark
business brewing of which they may have feared that I had an inkling.
They wanted to see if I proposed to go to Pietersdorp or Wesselsburg
and tell what I knew, and they clearly were resolved that I should not.
I laughed, I remember, thinking that they had forgotten the post-bag.
But then I reflected that I knew nothing of what might be happening
daily to the post-bag.

When I had reached this conclusion, my first impulse was to test it by
riding straight west on the main road. If I was right, I should
certainly be stopped. On second thoughts, however, this seemed to me to
be flinging up the game prematurely, and I resolved to wait a day or
two before acting.

Next day nothing happened, save that my sense of loneliness increased.
I felt that I was being hemmed in by barbarism, and cut off in a
ghoulish land from the succour of my own kind. I only kept my courage
up by the necessity of presenting a brave face to Mr Wardlaw, who was
by this time in a very broken condition of nerves. I had often thought
that it was my duty to advise him to leave, and to see him safely off,
but I shrank from severing myself from my only friend. I thought, too,
of the few Dutch farmers within riding distance, and had half a mind to
visit them, but they were far off over the plateau and could know
little of my anxieties.

The third day events moved faster. Japp was sober and wonderfully
quiet. He gave me good-morning quite in a friendly tone, and set to
posting up the books as if he had never misbehaved in his days. I was
so busy with my thoughts that I, too, must have been gentler than
usual, and the morning passed like a honeymoon, till I went across to
dinner.

I was just sitting down when I remembered that I had left my watch in
my waistcoat behind the counter, and started to go back for it. But at
the door I stopped short. For two horsemen had drawn up before the
store.

One was a native with what I took to be saddle-bags; the other was a
small slim man with a sun helmet, who was slowly dismounting. Something
in the cut of his jib struck me as familiar. I slipped into the empty
schoolroom and stared hard. Then, as he half-turned in handing his
bridle to the Kaffir, I got a sight of his face. It was my former
shipmate, Henriques. He said something to his companion, and entered
the store.

You may imagine that my curiosity ran to fever-heat. My first impulse
was to march over for my waistcoat, and make a third with Japp at the
interview. Happily I reflected in time that Henriques knew my face, for
I had grown no beard, having a great dislike to needless hair. If he
was one of the villains in the drama, he would mark me down for his
vengeance once he knew I was here, whereas at present he had probably
forgotten all about me. Besides, if I walked in boldly I would get no
news. If Japp and he had a secret, they would not blab it in my
presence.

My next idea was to slip in by the back to the room I had once lived
in. But how was I to cross the road? It ran white and dry some distance
each way in full view of the Kaffir with the horses. Further, the store
stood on a bare patch, and it would be a hard job to get in by the
back, assuming, as I believed, that the neighbourhood was thick with
spies.

The upshot was that I got my glasses and turned them on the store. The
door was open, and so was the window. In the gloom of the interior I
made out Henriques’ legs. He was standing by the counter, and
apparently talking to Japp. He moved to shut the door, and came back
inside my focus opposite the window. There he stayed for maybe ten
minutes, while I hugged my impatience. I would have given a hundred
pounds to be snug in my old room with Japp thinking me out of the
store.

Suddenly the legs twitched up, and his boots appeared above the
counter. Japp had invited him to his bedroom, and the game was now to
be played beyond my ken. This was more than I could stand, so I stole
out at the back door and took to the thickest bush on the hillside. My
notion was to cross the road half a mile down, when it had dropped into
the defile of the stream, and then to come swiftly up the edge of the
water so as to effect a back entrance into the store.

As fast as I dared I tore through the bush, and in about a quarter of
an hour had reached the point I was making for. Then I bore down to the
road, and was in the scrub about ten yards off it, when the clatter of
horses pulled me up again. Peeping out I saw that it was my friend and
his Kaffir follower, who were riding at a very good pace for the
plains. Toilfully and crossly I returned on my tracks to my
long-delayed dinner. Whatever the purport of their talk, Japp and the
Portuguese had not taken long over it.

In the store that afternoon I said casually to Japp that I had noticed
visitors at the door during my dinner hour. The old man looked me
frankly enough in the face. “Yes, it was Mr Hendricks,” he said, and
explained that the man was a Portuguese trader from Delagoa way, who
had a lot of Kaffir stores east of the Lebombo Hills. I asked his
business, and was told that he always gave Japp a call in when he was
passing.

“Do you take every man that calls into your bedroom, and shut the
door?” I asked.

Japp lost colour and his lip trembled. “I swear to God, Mr Crawfurd,
I’ve been doing nothing wrong. I’ve kept the promise I gave you like an
oath to my mother. I see you suspect me, and maybe you’ve cause, but
I’ll be quite honest with you. I have dealt in diamonds before this
with Hendricks. But to-day, when he asked me, I told him that that
business was off. I only took him to my room to give him a drink. He
likes brandy, and there’s no supply in the shop.”

I distrusted Japp wholeheartedly enough, but I was convinced that in
this case he spoke the truth. “Had the man any news?” I asked.

“He had and he hadn’t,” said Japp. “He was always a sullen beggar, and
never spoke much. But he said one queer thing. He asked me if I was
going to retire, and when I told him ‘yes,’ he said I had put it off
rather long. I told him I was as healthy as I ever was, and he laughed
in his dirty Portugoose way. ‘Yes, Mr Japp,’ he says, ‘but the country
is not so healthy.’ I wonder what the chap meant. He’ll be dead of
blackwater before many months, to judge by his eyes.”

This talk satisfied me about Japp, who was clearly in desperate fear of
offending me, and disinclined to return for the present to his old
ways. But I think the rest of the afternoon was the most wretched time
in my existence. It was as plain as daylight that we were in for some
grave trouble, trouble to which I believed that I alone held any kind
of clue. I had a pile of evidence—the visit of Henriques was the last
bit—which pointed to some great secret approaching its disclosure. I
thought that that disclosure meant blood and ruin. But I knew nothing
definite. If the commander of a British army had come to me then and
there and offered help, I could have done nothing, only asked him to
wait like me. The peril, whatever it was, did not threaten me only,
though I and Wardlaw and Japp might be the first to suffer; but I had a
terrible feeling that I alone could do something to ward it off, and
just what that something was I could not tell. I was horribly afraid,
not only of unknown death, but of my impotence to play any manly part.
I was alone, knowing too much and yet too little, and there was no
chance of help under the broad sky. I cursed myself for not writing to
Aitken at Lourenco Marques weeks before. He had promised to come up,
and he was the kind of man who kept his word.

In the late afternoon I dragged Wardlaw out for a walk. In his presence
I had to keep up a forced cheerfulness, and I believe the pretence did
me good. We took a path up the Berg among groves of stinkwood and
essenwood, where a failing stream made an easy route. It may have been
fancy, but it seemed to me that the wood was emptier and that we were
followed less closely. I remember it was a lovely evening, and in the
clear fragrant gloaming every foreland of the Berg stood out like a
great ship above the dark green sea of the bush. When we reached the
edge of the plateau we saw the sun sinking between two far blue peaks
in Makapan’s country, and away to the south the great roll of the high
veld. I longed miserably for the places where white men were thronged
together in dorps and cities. As we gazed a curious sound struck our
ears. It seemed to begin far up in the north—a low roll like the
combing of breakers on the sand. Then it grew louder and travelled
nearer—a roll, with sudden spasms of harsher sound in it; reminding me
of the churning in one of the pot-holes of Kirkcaple cliffs. Presently
it grew softer again as the sound passed south, but new notes were
always emerging. The echo came sometimes, as it were, from stark rock,
and sometimes from the deep gloom of the forests. I have never heard an
eerier sound. Neither natural nor human it seemed, but the voice of
that world between which is hid from man’s sight and hearing.

Mr Wardlaw clutched my arm, and in that moment I guessed the
explanation. The native drums were beating, passing some message from
the far north down the line of the Berg, where the locations were
thickest, to the great black population of the south.

“But that means war,” Mr Wardlaw cried.

“It means nothing of the kind,” I said shortly. “It’s their way of
sending news. It’s as likely to be some change in the weather or an
outbreak of cattle disease.”

When we got home I found Japp with a face like grey paper. “Did you
hear the drums?”he asked.

“Yes,” I said shortly. “What about them?”

“God forgive you for an ignorant Britisher,” he almost shouted. “You
may hear drums any night, but a drumming like that I only once heard
before. It was in ’79 in the ’Zeti valley. Do you know what happened
next day? Cetewayo’s impis came over the hills, and in an hour there
wasn’t a living white soul in the glen. Two men escaped, and one of
them was called Peter Japp.”

“We are in God’s hands then, and must wait on His will,” I said
solemnly.

There was no more sleep for Wardlaw and myself that night. We made the
best barricade we could of the windows, loaded all our weapons, and
trusted to Colin to give us early news. Before supper I went over to
get Japp to join us, but found that that worthy had sought help from
his old protector, the bottle, and was already sound asleep with both
door and window open.

I had made up my mind that death was certain, and yet my heart belied
my conviction, and I could not feel the appropriate mood. If anything I
was more cheerful since I had heard the drums. It was clearly now
beyond the power of me or any man to stop the march of events. My
thoughts ran on a native rising, and I kept telling myself how little
that was probable. Where were the arms, the leader, the discipline? At
any rate such arguments put me to sleep before dawn, and I wakened at
eight to find that nothing had happened. The clear morning sunlight, as
of old, made Blaauwildebeestefontein the place of a dream. Zeeta
brought in my cup of coffee as if this day were just like all others,
my pipe tasted as sweet, the fresh air from the Berg blew as fragrantly
on my brow. I went over to the store in reasonably good spirits,
leaving Wardlaw busy on the penitential Psalms.

The post-runner had brought the mail as usual, and there was one
private letter for me. I opened it with great excitement, for the
envelope bore the stamp of the firm. At last Colles had deigned to
answer.

Inside was a sheet of the firm’s notepaper, with the signature of
Colles across the top. Below some one had pencilled these five words:

“_The Blesbok[1] are changing ground._”


I looked to see that Japp had not suffocated himself, then shut up the
store, and went back to my room to think out this new mystification.

The thing had come from Colles, for it was the private notepaper of the
Durban office, and there was Colles’ signature. But the pencilling was
in a different hand. My deduction from this was that some one wished to
send me a message, and that Colles had given that some one a sheet of
signed paper to serve as a kind of introduction. I might take it,
therefore, that the scribble was Colles’ reply to my letter.

Now, my argument continued, if the unknown person saw fit to send me a
message, it could not be merely one of warning. Colles must have told
him that I was awake to some danger, and as I was in
Blaauwildebeestefontein, I must be nearer the heart of things than any
one else. The message must therefore be in the nature of some password,
which I was to remember when I heard it again.

I reasoned the whole thing out very clearly, and I saw no gap in my
logic. I cannot describe how that scribble had heartened me. I felt no
more the crushing isolation of yesterday. There were others beside me
in the secret. Help must be on the way, and the letter was the first
tidings.

But how near?—that was the question; and it occurred to me for the
first time to look at the postmark. I went back to the store and got
the envelope out of the waste-paper basket. The postmark was certainly
not Durban. The stamp was a Cape Colony one, and of the mark I could
only read three letters, T. R. S. This was no sort of clue, and I
turned the thing over, completely baffled. Then I noticed that there
was no mark of the post town of delivery. Our letters to
Blaauwildebeestefontein came through Pietersdorp and bore that mark. I
compared the envelope with others. They all had a circle, and
“Pietersdorp” in broad black letters. But this envelope had nothing
except the stamp.

I was still slow at detective work, and it was some minutes before the
explanation flashed on me. The letter had never been posted at all. The
stamp was a fake, and had been borrowed from an old envelope. There was
only one way in which it could have come. It must have been put in the
letter-bag while the postman was on his way from Pietersdorp. My
unknown friend must therefore be somewhere within eighty miles of me. I
hurried off to look for the post-runner, but he had started back an
hour before. There was nothing for it but to wait on the coming of the
unknown.

That afternoon I again took Mr Wardlaw for a walk. It is an ingrained
habit of mine that I never tell anyone more of a business than is
practically necessary. For months I had kept all my knowledge to
myself, and breathed not a word to a soul. But I thought it my duty to
tell Wardlaw about the letter, to let him see that we were not
forgotten. I am afraid it did not encourage his mind. Occult messages
seemed to him only the last proof of a deadly danger encompassing us,
and I could not shake his opinion.

We took the same road to the crown of the Berg, and I was confirmed in
my suspicion that the woods were empty and the watchers gone. The place
was as deserted as the bush at Umvelos’. When we reached the summit
about sunset we waited anxiously for the sound of drums. It came, as we
expected, louder and more menacing than before. Wardlaw stood pinching
my arm as the great tattoo swept down the escarpment, and died away in
the far mountains beyond the Olifants. Yet it no longer seemed to be a
wall of sound, shutting us out from our kindred in the West. A message
had pierced the wall. If the blesbok were changing ground, I believed
that the hunters were calling out their hounds and getting ready for
the chase.

[1] A species of buck.




CHAPTER VII
CAPTAIN ARCOLL TELLS A TALE


It froze in the night, harder than was common on the Berg even in
winter, and as I crossed the road next morning it was covered with
rime. All my fears had gone, and my mind was strung high with
expectation. Five pencilled words may seem a small thing to build hope
on, but it was enough for me, and I went about my work in the store
with a reasonably light heart. One of the first things I did was to
take stock of our armoury. There were five sporting Mausers of a cheap
make, one Mauser pistol, a Lee-Speed carbine, and a little
nickel-plated revolver. There was also Japp’s shot-gun, an old hammered
breech-loader, as well as the gun I had brought out with me. There was
a good supply of cartridges, including a stock for a .400 express which
could not be found. I pocketed the revolver, and searched till I
discovered a good sheath-knife. If fighting was in prospect I might as
well look to my arms.

All the morning I sat among flour and sugar possessing my soul in as
much patience as I could command. Nothing came down the white road from
the west. The sun melted the rime; the flies came out and buzzed in the
window; Japp got himself out of bed, brewed strong coffee, and went
back to his slumbers. Presently it was dinner-time, and I went over to
a silent meal with Wardlaw. When I returned I must have fallen asleep
over a pipe, for the next thing I knew I was blinking drowsily at the
patch of sun in the door, and listening for footsteps. In the dead
stillness of the afternoon I thought I could discern a shuffling in the
dust. I got up and looked out, and there, sure enough, was some one
coming down the road.

But it was only a Kaffir, and a miserable-looking object at that. I had
never seen such an anatomy. It was a very old man, bent almost double,
and clad in a ragged shirt and a pair of foul khaki trousers. He
carried an iron pot, and a few belongings were tied up in a dirty
handkerchief. He must have been a _dacha_[1] smoker, for he coughed
hideously, twisting his body with the paroxysms. I had seen the type
before—the old broken-down native who had no kin to support him, and no
tribe to shelter him. They wander about the roads, cooking their
wretched meals by their little fires, till one morning they are found
stiff under a bush.

The native gave me a good-day in Kaffir, then begged for tobacco or a
handful of mealie-meal.

I asked him where he came from.

“From the west, Inkoos,” he said, “and before that from the south. It
is a sore road for old bones.”

I went into the store to fetch some meal, and when I came out he had
shuffled close to the door. He had kept his eyes on the ground, but now
he looked up at me, and I thought he had very bright eyes for such an
old wreck.

“The nights are cold, Inkoos,” he wailed, “and my folk are scattered,
and I have no kraal. The aasvogels follow me, and I can hear the
blesbok.” “What about the blesbok?” I asked with a start.

“The blesbok are changing ground,” he said, and looked me straight in
the face.

“And where are the hunters?” I asked. “They are here and behind me,” he
said in English, holding out his pot for my meal, while he began to
edge into the middle of the road.

I followed, and, speaking English, asked him if he knew of a man named
Colles.

“I come from him, young Baas. Where is your house? Ah, the school.
There will be a way in by the back window? See that it is open, for
I’ll be there shortly.” Then lifting up his voice he called down in
Sesuto all manner of blessings on me for my kindness, and went
shuffling down the sunlit road, coughing like a volcano.

In high excitement I locked up the store and went over to Mr Wardlaw.
No children had come to school that day, and he was sitting idle,
playing patience. “Lock the door,” I said, “and come into my room.
We’re on the brink of explanations.”

In about twenty minutes the bush below the back-window parted and the
Kaffir slipped out. He grinned at me, and after a glance round, hopped
very nimbly over the sill. Then he examined the window and pulled the
curtains.

“Is the outer door shut?” he asked in excellent English. “Well, get me
some hot water, and any spare clothes you may possess, Mr Crawfurd. I
must get comfortable before we begin our _indaba_.[2] We’ve the night
before us, so there’s plenty of time. But get the house clear, and see
that nobody disturbs me at my toilet. I am a modest man, and sensitive
about my looks.”

I brought him what he wanted, and looked on at an amazing
transformation. Taking a phial from his bundle, he rubbed some liquid
on his face and neck and hands, and got rid of the black colouring. His
body and legs he left untouched, save that he covered them with shirt
and trousers from my wardrobe. Then he pulled off a scaly wig, and
showed beneath it a head of close-cropped grizzled hair. In ten minutes
the old Kaffir had been transformed into an active soldierly-looking
man of maybe fifty years. Mr Wardlaw stared as if he had seen a
resurrection.

“I had better introduce myself,” he said, when he had taken the edge
off his thirst and hunger. “My name is Arcoll, Captain James Arcoll. I
am speaking to Mr Crawfurd, the storekeeper, and Mr Wardlaw, the
schoolmaster, of Blaauwildebeestefontein. Where, by the way, is Mr
Peter Japp? Drunk? Ah, yes, it was always his failing. The quorum,
however, is complete without him.”

By this time it was about sunset, and I remember I cocked my ear to
hear the drums beat. Captain Arcoll noticed the movement as he noticed
all else. “You’re listening for the drums, but you won’t hear them.
That business is over here. To-night they beat in Swaziland and down
into the Tonga border. Three days more, unless you and I, Mr Crawfurd,
are extra smart, and they’ll be hearing them in Durban.”

It was not till the lamp was lit, the fire burning well, and the house
locked and shuttered, that Captain Arcoll began his tale.

“First,” he said, “let me hear what you know. Colles told me that you
were a keen fellow, and had wind of some mystery here. You wrote him
about the way you were spied on, but I told him to take no notice. Your
affair, Mr Crawfurd, had to wait on more urgent matters. Now, what do
you think is happening?” I spoke very shortly, weighing my words, for I
felt I was on trial before these bright eyes. “I think that some kind
of native rising is about to commence.”

“Ay,” he said dryly, “you would, and your evidence would be the spying
and drumming. Anything more?”

“I have come on the tracks of a lot of I.D.B. work in the
neighbourhood. The natives have some supply of diamonds, which they
sell bit by bit, and I don’t doubt but they have been getting guns with
the proceeds.”

He nodded, “Have you any notion who has been engaged in the job?”

I had it on my tongue to mention Japp, but forbore, remembering my
promise. “I can name one,” I said, “a little yellow Portugoose, who
calls himself Henriques or Hendricks. He passed by here the day before
yesterday.”

Captain Arcoll suddenly was consumed with quiet laughter. “Did you
notice the Kaffir who rode with him and carried his saddlebags? Well,
he’s one of my men. Henriques would have a fit if he knew what was in
those saddlebags. They contain my change of clothes, and other odds and
ends. Henriques’ own stuff is in a hole in the spruit. A handy way of
getting one’s luggage sent on, eh? The bags are waiting for me at a
place I appointed.” And again Captain Arcoll indulged his sense of
humour. Then he became grave, and returned to his examination.

“A rising, with diamonds as the sinews of war, and Henriques as the
chief agent. Well and good! But who is to lead, and what are the
natives going to rise about?”

“I know nothing further, but I have made some guesses.”

“Let’s hear your guesses,” he said, blowing smoke rings from his pipe.

“I think the main mover is a great black minister who calls himself
John Laputa.”

Captain Arcoll nearly sprang out of his chair. “Now, how on earth did
you find that out? Quick, Mr Crawfurd, tell me all you know, for this
is desperately important.”

I began at the beginning, and told him the story of what happened on
the Kirkcaple shore. Then I spoke of my sight of him on board ship, his
talk with Henriques about Blaauwildebeestefontein, and his hurried
departure from Durban.

Captain Arcoll listened intently, and at the mention of Durban he
laughed. “You and I seem to have been running on lines which nearly
touched. I thought I had grabbed my friend Laputa that night in Durban,
but I was too cocksure and he slipped off. Do you know, Mr Crawfurd,
you have been on the right trail long before me? When did you say you
saw him at his devil-worship? Seven years ago? Then you were the first
man alive to know the Reverend John in his true colours. You knew seven
years ago what I only found out last year.”

“Well, that’s my story,” I said. “I don’t know what the rising is
about, but there’s one other thing I can tell you. There’s some kind of
sacred place for the Kaffirs, and I’ve found out where it is.” I gave
him a short account of my adventures in the Rooirand.

He smoked silently for a bit after I had finished. “You’ve got the
skeleton of the whole thing right, and you only want the filling up.
And you found out everything for yourself? Colles was right; you’re not
wanting in intelligence, Mr Crawfurd.”

It was not much of a compliment, but I have never been more pleased in
my life. This slim, grizzled man, with his wrinkled face and bright
eyes, was clearly not lavish in his praise. I felt it was no small
thing to have earned a word of commendation.

“And now I will tell you my story,” said Captain Arcoll. “It is a long
story, and I must begin far back. It has taken me years to decipher it,
and, remember, I’ve been all my life at this native business. I can
talk every dialect, and I have the customs of every tribe by heart.
I’ve travelled over every mile of South Africa, and Central and East
Africa too. I was in both the Matabele wars, and I’ve seen a heap of
other fighting which never got into the papers. So what I tell you you
can take as gospel, for it is knowledge that was not learned in a day.”

He puffed away, and then asked suddenly, “Did you ever hear of Prester
John?”

“The man that lived in Central Asia?” I asked, with a reminiscence of a
story-book I had as a boy. “No, no,” said Mr Wardlaw, “he means the
King of Abyssinia in the fifteenth century. I’ve been reading all about
him. He was a Christian, and the Portuguese sent expedition after
expedition to find him, but they never got there. Albuquerque wanted to
make an alliance with him and capture the Holy Sepulchre.”

Arcoll nodded. “That’s the one I mean. There’s not very much known
about him, except Portuguese legends. He was a sort of Christian, but I
expect that his practices were as pagan as his neighbours’. There is no
doubt that he was a great conqueror. Under him and his successors, the
empire of Ethiopia extended far south of Abyssinia away down to the
Great Lakes.”

“How long did this power last?” I asked wondering to what tale this was
prologue.

“That’s a mystery no scholar has ever been able to fathom. Anyhow, the
centre of authority began to shift southward, and the warrior tribes
moved in that direction. At the end of the sixteenth century the chief
native power was round about the Zambesi. The Mazimba and the Makaranga
had come down from the Lake Nyassa quarter, and there was a strong
kingdom in Manicaland. That was the Monomotapa that the Portuguese
thought so much of.”

Wardlaw nodded eagerly. The story was getting into ground that he knew
about.

“The thing to remember is that all these little empires thought
themselves the successors of Prester John. It took me a long time to
find this out, and I have spent days in the best libraries in Europe
over it. They all looked back to a great king in the north, whom they
called by about twenty different names. They had forgotten about his
Christianity, but they remembered that he was a conqueror.

“Well, to make a long story short, Monomotapa disappeared in time, and
fresh tribes came down from the north, and pushed right down to Natal
and the Cape. That is how the Zulus first appeared. They brought with
them the story of Prester John, but by this time it had ceased to be a
historical memory, and had become a religious cult. They worshipped a
great Power who had been their ancestor, and the favourite Zulu word
for him was Umkulunkulu. The belief was perverted into fifty different
forms, but this was the central creed—that Umkulunkulu had been the
father of the tribe, and was alive as a spirit to watch over them.

“They brought more than a creed with them. Somehow or other, some
fetich had descended from Prester John by way of the Mazimba and Angoni
and Makaranga. What it is I do not know, but it was always in the hands
of the tribe which for the moment held the leadership. The great native
wars of the sixteenth century, which you can read about in the
Portuguese historians, were not for territory but for leadership, and
mainly for the possession of this fetich. Anyhow, we know that the
Zulus brought it down with them. They called it _Ndhlondhlo_, which
means the Great Snake, but I don’t suppose that it was any kind of
snake. The snake was their totem, and they would naturally call their
most sacred possession after it.

“Now I will tell you a thing that few know. You have heard of Tchaka.
He was a sort of black Napoleon early in the last century, and he made
the Zulus the paramount power in South Africa, slaughtering about two
million souls to accomplish it. Well, he had the fetich, whatever it
was, and it was believed that he owed his conquests to it. Mosilikatse
tried to steal it, and that was why he had to fly to Matabeleland. But
with Tchaka it disappeared. Dingaan did not have it, nor Panda, and
Cetewayo never got it, though he searched the length and breadth of the
country for it. It had gone out of existence, and with it the chance of
a Kaffir empire.”

Captain Arcoll got up to light his pipe, and I noticed that his face
was grave. He was not telling us this yarn for our amusement.

“So much for Prester John and his charm,” he said. “Now I have to take
up the history at a different point. In spite of risings here and
there, and occasional rows, the Kaffirs have been quiet for the better
part of half a century. It is no credit to us. They have had plenty of
grievances, and we are no nearer understanding them than our fathers
were. But they are scattered and divided. We have driven great wedges
of white settlement into their territory, and we have taken away their
arms. Still, they are six times as many as we are, and they have long
memories, and a thoughtful man may wonder how long the peace will last.
I have often asked myself that question, and till lately I used to
reply, ‘For ever because they cannot find a leader with the proper
authority, and they have no common cause to fight for.’ But a year or
two ago I began to change my mind.

“It is my business to act as chief Intelligence officer among the
natives. Well, one day, I came on the tracks of a curious person. He
was a Christian minister called Laputa, and he was going among the
tribes from Durban to the Zambesi as a roving evangelist. I found that
he made an enormous impression, and yet the people I spoke to were
chary of saying much about him. Presently I found that he preached more
than the gospel. His word was ‘Africa for the Africans,’ and his chief
point was that the natives had had a great empire in the past, and
might have a great empire again. He used to tell the story of Prester
John, with all kinds of embroidery of his own. You see, Prester John
was a good argument for him, for he had been a Christian as well as a
great potentate. “For years there has been plenty of this talk in South
Africa, chiefly among Christian Kaffirs. It is what they call
‘Ethiopianism,’ and American negroes are the chief apostles. For
myself, I always thought the thing perfectly harmless. I don’t care a
fig whether the native missions break away from the parent churches in
England and call themselves by fancy names. The more freedom they have
in their religious life, the less they are likely to think about
politics. But I soon found out that Laputa was none of your flabby
educated negroes from America, and I began to watch him.

“I first came across him at a revival meeting in London, where he was a
great success. He came and spoke to me about my soul, but he gave up
when I dropped into Zulu. The next time I met him was on the lower
Limpopo, when I had the pleasure of trying to shoot him from a boat.”
Captain Arcoll took his pipe from his mouth and laughed at the
recollection.

“I had got on to an I.D.B. gang, and to my amazement found the
evangelist among them. But the Reverend John was too much for me. He
went overboard in spite of the crocodiles, and managed to swim below
water to the reed bed at the side. However, that was a valuable
experience for me, for it gave me a clue.

“I next saw him at a Missionary Conference in Cape Town, and after that
at a meeting of the Geographical Society in London, where I had a long
talk with him. My reputation does not follow me home, and he thought I
was an English publisher with an interest in missions. You see I had no
evidence to connect him with I.D.B., and besides I fancied that his
real game was something bigger than that; so I just bided my time and
watched.

“I did my best to get on to his dossier, but it was no easy job.
However, I found out a few things. He had been educated in the States,
and well educated too, for the man is a good scholar and a great
reader, besides the finest natural orator I have ever heard. There was
no doubt that he was of Zulu blood, but I could get no traces of his
family. He must come of high stock, for he is a fine figure of a man.
“Very soon I found it was no good following him in his excursions into
civilization. There he was merely the educated Kaffir; a great pet of
missionary societies, and a favourite speaker at Church meetings. You
will find evidence given by him in Blue-Books on native affairs, and he
counted many members of Parliament at home among his correspondents. I
let that side go, and resolved to dog him when on his evangelizing
tours in the back-veld.

“For six months I stuck to him like a leech. I am pretty good at
disguises, and he never knew who was the broken-down old Kaffir who
squatted in the dirt at the edge of the crowd when he spoke, or the
half-caste who called him ‘Sir’ and drove his Cape-cart. I had some
queer adventures, but these can wait. The gist of the thing is, that
after six months which turned my hair grey I got a glimmering of what
he was after. He talked Christianity to the mobs in the kraals, but to
the indunas[3] he told a different story.”

Captain Arcoll helped himself to a drink. “You can guess what that
story was, Mr Crawfurd. At full moon when the black cock was blooded,
the Reverend John forgot his Christianity. He was back four centuries
among the Mazimba sweeping down on the Zambesi. He told them, and they
believed him, that he was the Umkulunkulu, the incarnated spirit of
Prester John. He told them that he was there to lead the African race
to conquest and empire. Ay, and he told them more: for he has, or says
he has, the Great Snake itself, the necklet of Prester John.”

Neither of us spoke; we were too occupied with fitting this news into
our chain of knowledge.

Captain Arcoll went on. “Now that I knew his purpose, I set myself to
find out his preparations. It was not long before I found a mighty
organization at work from the Zambesi to the Cape. The great tribes
were up to their necks in the conspiracy, and all manner of little
sects had been taken in. I have sat at tribal councils and been sworn a
blood brother, and I have used the secret password to get knowledge in
odd places. It was a dangerous game, and, as I have said, I had my
adventures, but I came safe out of it—with my knowledge.

“The first thing I found out was that there was a great deal of wealth
somewhere among the tribes. Much of it was in diamonds, which the
labourers stole from the mines and the chiefs impounded. Nearly every
tribe had its secret chest, and our friend Laputa had the use of them
all. Of course the difficulty was changing the diamonds into coin, and
he had to start I.D.B. on a big scale. Your pal, Henriques, was the
chief agent for this, but he had others at Mozambique and Johannesburg,
ay, and in London, whom I have on my list. With the money, guns and
ammunition were bought, and it seems that a pretty flourishing trade
has been going on for some time. They came in mostly overland through
Portuguese territory, though there have been cases of consignments to
Johannesburg houses, the contents of which did not correspond with the
invoice. You ask what the Governments were doing to let this go on.
Yes, and you may well ask. They were all asleep. They never dreamed of
danger from the natives, and in any case it was difficult to police the
Portuguese side. Laputa knew our weakness, and he staked everything on
it.

“My first scheme was to lay Laputa by the heels; but no Government
would act on my information. The man was strongly buttressed by public
support at home, and South Africa has burned her fingers before this
with arbitrary arrests. Then I tried to fasten I.D.B. on him, but I
could not get my proofs till too late. I nearly had him in Durban, but
he got away; and he never gave me a second chance. For five months he
and Henriques have been lying low, because their scheme was getting
very ripe. I have been following them through Zululand and Gazaland,
and I have discovered that the train is ready, and only wants the
match. For a month I have never been more than five hours behind him on
the trail; and if he has laid his train, I have laid mine also.”

Arcoll’s whimsical, humorous face had hardened into grimness, and in
his eyes there was the light of a fierce purpose. The sight of him
comforted me, in spite of his tale.

“But what can he hope to do?” I asked. “Though he roused every Kaffir
in South Africa he would be beaten. You say he is an educated man. He
must know he has no chance in the long run.”

“I said he was an educated man, but he is also a Kaffir. He can see the
first stage of a thing, and maybe the second, but no more. That is the
native mind. If it was not like that our chance would be the worse.”

“You say the scheme is ripe,” I said; “how ripe?”

Arcoll looked at the clock. “In half an hour’s time Laputa will be with
’Mpefu. There he will stay the night. To-morrow morning he goes to
Umvelos’ to meet Henriques. To-morrow evening the gathering begins.”

“One question,” I said. “How big a man is Laputa?”

“The biggest thing that the Kaffirs have ever produced. I tell you, in
my opinion he is a great genius. If he had been white he might have
been a second Napoleon. He is a born leader of men, and as brave as a
lion. There is no villainy he would not do if necessary, and yet I
should hesitate to call him a blackguard. Ay, you may look surprised at
me, you two pragmatical Scotsmen; but I have, so to speak, lived with
the man for months, and there’s fineness and nobility in him. He would
be a terrible enemy, but a just one. He has the heart of a poet and a
king, and it is God’s curse that he has been born among the children of
Ham. I hope to shoot him like a dog in a day or two, but I am glad to
bear testimony to his greatness.”

“If the rising starts to-morrow,” I asked, “have you any of his plans?”

He picked up a map from the table and opened it. “The first rendezvous
is somewhere near Sikitola’s. Then they move south, picking up
contingents; and the final concentration is to be on the high veld near
Amsterdam, which is convenient for the Swazis and the Zulus. After that
I know nothing, but of course there are local concentrations along the
whole line of the Berg from Mashonaland to Basutoland. Now, look here.
To get to Amsterdam they must cross the Delagoa Bay Railway. Well, they
won’t be allowed to. If they get as far, they will be scattered there.
As I told you, I too have laid my train. We have the police ready all
along the scarp of the Berg. Every exit from native territory is
watched, and the frontier farmers are out on commando. We have regulars
on the Delagoa Bay and Natal lines, and a system of field telegraphs
laid which can summon further troops to any point. It has all been kept
secret, because we are still in the dark ourselves. The newspaper
public knows nothing about any rising, but in two days every white
household in South Africa will be in a panic. Make no mistake, Mr
Crawfurd; this is a grim business. We shall smash Laputa and his men,
but it will be a fierce fight, and there will be much good blood shed.
Besides, it will throw the country back another half-century. Would to
God I had been man enough to put a bullet through his head in cold
blood. But I could not do it—it was too like murder; and maybe I shall
never have the chance now.”

“There’s one thing puzzles me,” I said. “What makes Laputa come up here
to start with? Why doesn’t he begin with Zululand?”

“God knows! There’s sure to be sense in it, for he does nothing without
reason. We may know to-morrow.”

But as Captain Arcoll spoke, the real reason suddenly flashed into my
mind: Laputa had to get the Great Snake, the necklet of Prester John,
to give his leadership prestige. Apparently he had not yet got it, or
Arcoll would have known. He started from this neighbourhood because the
fetich was somewhere hereabouts. I was convinced that my guess was
right, but I kept my own counsel.

“To-morrow Laputa and Henriques meet at Umvelos’, probably at your new
store, Mr Crawfurd. And so the ball commences.”

My resolution was suddenly taken.

“I think,” I said, “I had better be present at the meeting, as
representing the firm.”

Captain Arcoll stared at me and laughed. “I had thought of going
myself,” he said.

“Then you go to certain death, disguise yourself as you please. You
cannot meet them in the store as I can. I’m there on my ordinary
business, and they will never suspect. If you’re to get any news, I’m
the man to go.”

He looked at me steadily for a minute or so. “I’m not sure that’s such
a bad idea of yours. I would be better employed myself on the Berg,
and, as you say, I would have little chance of hearing anything. You’re
a plucky fellow, Mr Crawfurd. I suppose you understand that the risk is
pretty considerable.”

“I suppose I do; but since I’m in this thing, I may as well see it out.
Besides, I’ve an old quarrel with our friend Laputa.”

“Good and well,” said Captain Arcoll. “Draw in your chair to the table,
then, and I’ll explain to you the disposition of my men. I should tell
you that I have loyal natives in my pay in most tribes, and can count
on early intelligence. We can’t match their telepathy; but the new type
of field telegraph is not so bad, and may be a trifle more reliable.”

Till midnight we pored over maps, and certain details were burned in on
my memory. Then we went to bed and slept soundly, even Mr Wardlaw. It
was strange how fear had gone from the establishment, now that we knew
the worst and had a fighting man by our side.

[1] Hemp.

[2] Council.

[3] Lesser chiefs.




CHAPTER VIII
I FALL IN AGAIN WITH THE REVEREND JOHN LAPUTA


Once, as a boy, I had earnestly desired to go into the army, and had
hopes of rising to be a great general. Now that I know myself better, I
do not think I would have been much good at a general’s work. I would
have shirked the loneliness of it, the isolation of responsibility. But
I think I would have done well in a subaltern command, for I had a
great notion of carrying out orders, and a certain zest in the mere act
of obedience. Three days before I had been as nervous as a kitten
because I was alone and it was “up to me,” as Americans say, to decide
on the next step. But now that I was only one wheel in a great machine
of defence my nervousness seemed to have fled. I was well aware that
the mission I was bound on was full of risk; but, to my surprise, I
felt no fear. Indeed, I had much the same feeling as a boy on a
Saturday’s holiday who has planned a big expedition. One thing only I
regretted—that Tam Dyke was not with me to see the fun. The thought of
that faithful soul, now beating somewhere on the seas, made me long for
his comradeship. As I shaved, I remember wondering if I would ever
shave again, and the thought gave me no tremors. For once in my sober
life I was strung up to the gambler’s pitch of adventure.

My job was to go to Umvelos’ as if on my ordinary business, and if
possible find out something of the evening’s plan of march. The
question was how to send back a message to Arcoll, assuming I had any
difficulty in getting away. At first this puzzled us both, and then I
thought of Colin. I had trained the dog to go home at my bidding, for
often when I used to go hunting I would have occasion to visit a kraal
where he would have been a nuisance. Accordingly, I resolved to take
Colin with me, and, if I got into trouble, to send word by him.

I asked about Laputa’s knowledge of our preparations. Arcoll was
inclined to think that he suspected little. The police and the
commandos had been kept very secret, and, besides, they were moving on
the high veld and out of the ken of the tribes. Natives, he told me,
were not good scouts so far as white man’s work was concerned, for they
did not understand the meaning of what we did. On the other hand, his
own native scouts brought him pretty accurate tidings of any Kaffir
movements. He thought that all the bush country of the plain would be
closely watched, and that no one would get through without some kind of
pass. But he thought also that the storekeeper might be an exception,
for his presence would give rise to no suspicions. Almost his last
words to me were to come back hell-for-leather if I saw the game was
hopeless, and in any case to leave as soon as I got any news. “If
you’re there when the march begins,” he said, “they’ll cut your throat
for a certainty.” I had all the various police posts on the Berg clear
in my mind, so that I would know where to make for if the road to
Blaauwildebeestefontein should be closed.

I said good-bye to Arcoll and Wardlaw with a light heart, though the
schoolmaster broke down and implored me to think better of it. As I
turned down into the gorge I heard the sound of horses’ feet far
behind, and, turning back, saw white riders dismounting at the dorp. At
any rate I was leaving the country well guarded in my rear.

It was a fine morning in mid-winter, and I was in very good spirits as
I jogged on my pony down the steep hill-road, with Colin running beside
me. A month before I had taken the same journey, with no suspicion in
my head of what the future was to bring. I thought about my Dutch
companions, now with their cattle far out on the plains. Did they know
of the great danger, I wondered. All the way down the glen I saw no
sign of human presence. The game-birds mocked me from the thicket; a
brace of white _berghaan_ circled far up in the blue; and I had for
pleasant comrade the brawling river. I dismounted once to drink, and in
that green haven of flowers and ferns I was struck sharply with a sense
of folly. Here were we wretched creatures of men making for each
other’s throats, and outraging the good earth which God had made so
fair a habitation.

I had resolved on a short cut to Umvelos’, avoiding the neighbourhood
of Sikitola’s kraal, so when the river emerged from the glen I crossed
it and struck into the bush. I had not gone far before I realized that
something strange was going on. It was like the woods on the Berg a
week before. I had the impression of many people moving in the bush,
and now and then I caught a glimpse of them. My first thought was that
I should be stopped, but soon it appeared that these folk had business
of their own which did not concern me. I was conscious of being
watched, yet it was clear that the bush folk were not there for the
purpose of watching me.

For a little I kept my spirits, but as the hours passed with the same
uncanny hurrying to and fro all about me my nerves began to suffer.
Weeks of espionage at Blaauwildebeestefontein had made me jumpy. These
people apparently meant me no ill, and had no time to spare on me, But
the sensation of moving through them was like walking on a black-dark
night with precipices all around. I felt odd quiverings between my
shoulder blades where a spear might be expected to lodge. Overhead was
a great blue sky and a blazing sun, and I could see the path running
clear before me between the walls of scrub. But it was like midnight to
me, a midnight of suspicion and unknown perils. I began to wish
heartily I had never come.

I stopped for my midday meal at a place called Taqui, a grassy glade in
the bush where a tiny spring of water crept out from below a big stone,
only to disappear in the sand. Here I sat and smoked for half an hour,
wondering what was going to become of me. The air was very still, but I
could hear the rustle of movement somewhere within a hundred yards. The
hidden folk were busy about their own ends, and I regretted that I had
not taken the road by Sikitola’s and seen how the kraals looked. They
must be empty now, for the young men were already out on some mission.
So nervous I got that I took my pocket-book and wrote down certain
messages to my mother, which I implored whoever should find my body to
transmit. Then, a little ashamed of my childishness, I pulled myself
together, and remounted.

About three in the afternoon I came over a low ridge of bush and saw
the corrugated iron roof of the store and the gleam of water from the
Labongo. The sight encouraged me, for at any rate it meant the end of
this disquieting ride. Here the bush changed to trees of some size, and
after leaving the ridge the road plunged for a little into a thick
shade. I had forgotten for a moment the folk in the bush, and when a
man stepped out of the thicket I pulled up my horse with a start.

It was a tall native, who carried himself proudly, and after a glance
at me, stalked along at my side. He wore curious clothes, for he had a
kind of linen tunic, and around his waist hung a kilt of leopard-skin.
In such a man one would have looked for a _ting-kop_,[1] but instead he
had a mass of hair, not like a Kaffir’s wool, but long and curled like
some popular musician’s. I should have been prepared for the face, but
the sight of it sent a sudden chill of fright through my veins. For
there was the curved nose, the deep flashing eyes, and the cruel lips
of my enemy of the Kirkcaple shore.

Colin was deeply suspicious and followed his heels growling, but he
never turned his head.

“The day is warm, father,” I said in Kaffir. “Do you go far?”

He slackened his pace till he was at my elbow. “But a short way, Baas,”
he replied in English; “I go to the store yonder.”

“Well met, then,” said I, “for I am the storekeeper. You will find
little in it, for it is newly built and not yet stocked. I have ridden
over to see to it.”

He turned his face to me. “That is bad news. I had hoped for food and
drink yonder. I have travelled far, and in the chill nights I desire a
cover for my head. Will the Baas allow me to sleep the night in an
outhouse?”

By this time I had recovered my nerve, and was ready to play the part I
had determined on. “Willingly,” I said. “You may sleep in the storeroom
if you care. You will find sacks for bedding, and the place is snug
enough on a cold night.”

He thanked me with a grave dignity which I had never seen in any
Kaffir. As my eye fell on his splendid proportions I forgot all else in
my admiration of the man. In his minister’s clothes he had looked only
a heavily built native, but now in his savage dress I saw how noble a
figure he made. He must have been at least six feet and a half, but his
chest was so deep and his shoulders so massive that one did not remark
his height. He put a hand on my saddle, and I remember noting how slim
and fine it was, more like a high-bred woman’s than a man’s. Curiously
enough he filled me with a certain confidence.

“I do not think you will cut my throat,” I said to myself. “Your game
is too big for common murder.”

The store at Umvelos’ stood as I had left it. There was the sjambok I
had forgotten still lying on the window sill. I unlocked the door, and
a stifling smell of new paint came out to meet me. Inside there was
nothing but the chairs and benches, and in a corner the pots and pans I
had left against my next visit. I unlocked the cupboard and got out a
few stores, opened the windows of the bedroom next door, and flung my
kaross on the cartel which did duty as bed. Then I went out to find
Laputa standing patiently in the sunshine.

I showed him the outhouse where I had said he might sleep. It was the
largest room in the store, but wholly unfurnished. A pile of barrels
and packing-cases stood in the corner, and there was enough sacking to
make a sort of bed.

“I am going to make tea,” I said. “If you have come far you would maybe
like a cup?”

He thanked me, and I made a fire in the grate and put on the kettle to
boil. Then I set on the table biscuits, and sardines, and a pot of jam.
It was my business now to play the fool, and I believe I succeeded to
admiration in the part. I blush to-day to think of the stuff I talked.
First I made him sit on a chair opposite me, a thing no white man in
the country would have done. Then I told him affectionately that I
liked natives, that they were fine fellows and better men than the
dirty whites round about. I explained that I was fresh from England,
and believed in equal rights for all men, white or coloured. God
forgive me, but I think I said I hoped to see the day when Africa would
belong once more to its rightful masters.

He heard me with an impassive face, his grave eyes studying every line
of me. I am bound to add that he made a hearty meal, and drank three
cups of strong tea of my brewing. I gave him a cigar, one of a lot I
had got from a Dutch farmer who was experimenting with their
manufacture—and all the while I babbled of myself and my opinions. He
must have thought me half-witted, and indeed before long I began to be
of the same opinion myself. I told him that I meant to sleep the night
here, and go back in the morning to Blaauwildebeestefontein, and then
to Pietersdorp for stores. By-and-by I could see that he had ceased to
pay any attention to what I said. I was clearly set down in his mind as
a fool. Instead he kept looking at Colin, who was lying blinking in the
doorway, one wary eye cocked on the stranger.

“You have a fine dog,” he observed.

“Yes,” I agreed, with one final effort of mendacity, “he’s fine to look
at, but he has no grit in him. Any mongrel from a kraal can make him
turn tail. Besides, he is a born fool and can’t find his way home. I’m
thinking of getting rid of him.”

Laputa rose and his eye fell on the dog’s back. I could see that he saw
the lie of his coat, and that he did not agree with me.

“The food was welcome, Baas,” he said. “If you will listen to me I can
repay hospitality with advice. You are a stranger here. Trouble comes,
and if you are wise you will go back to the Berg.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, with an air of cheerful idiocy.
“But back to the Berg I go the first thing in the morning. I hate these
stinking plains.”

“It were wise to go to-night,” he said, with a touch of menace in his
tone.

“I can’t,” I said, and began to sing the chorus of a ridiculous
music-hall song—

“There’s no place like home—but

I’m afraid to go home in the dark.”


Laputa shrugged his shoulders, stepped over the bristling Colin, and
went out. When I looked after him two minutes later he had disappeared.

[1] The circlet into which, with the aid of gum, Zulu warriors weave
their hair.




CHAPTER IX
THE STORE AT UMVELOS’


I sat down on a chair and laboured to collect my thoughts. Laputa had
gone, and would return sooner or later with Henriques. If I was to
remain alive till morning, both of them must be convinced that I was
harmless. Laputa was probably of that opinion, but Henriques would
recognize me, and I had no wish to have that yellow miscreant
investigating my character. There was only one way out of it—I must be
incapably drunk. There was not a drop of liquor in the store, but I
found an old whisky bottle half full of methylated spirits. With this I
thought I might raise an atmosphere of bad whisky, and for the rest I
must trust to my meagre gifts as an actor.

Supposing I escaped suspicion, Laputa and Henriques would meet in the
outhouse, and I must find some means of overhearing them. Here I was
fairly baffled. There was no window in the outhouse save in the roof,
and they were sure to shut and bolt the door. I might conceal myself
among the barrels inside; but apart from the fact that they were likely
to search them before beginning their conference, it was quite certain
that they would satisfy themselves that I was safe in the other end of
the building before going to the outhouse.

Suddenly I thought of the cellar which we had built below the store.
There was an entrance by a trap-door behind the counter, and another in
the outhouse. I had forgotten the details, but my hope was that the
second was among the barrels. I shut the outer door, prised up the
trap, and dropped into the vault, which had been floored roughly with
green bricks. Lighting match after match, I crawled to the other end
and tried to lift the door. It would not stir, so I guessed that the
barrels were on the top of it. Back to the outhouse I went, and found
that sure enough a heavy packing-case was standing on a corner. I fixed
it slightly open, so as to let me hear, and so arranged the odds and
ends round about it that no one looking from the floor of the outhouse
would guess at its existence. It occurred to me that the conspirators
would want seats, so I placed two cases at the edge of the heap, that
they might not be tempted to forage in the interior.

This done, I went back to the store and proceeded to rig myself out for
my part. The cellar had made me pretty dirty, and I added some new
daubs to my face. My hair had grown longish, and I ran my hands through
it till it stood up like a cockatoo’s crest. Then I cunningly disposed
the methylated spirits in the places most likely to smell. I burned a
little on the floor, I spilt some on the counter and on my hands, and I
let it dribble over my coat. In five minutes I had made the room stink
like a shebeen. I loosened the collar of my shirt, and when I looked at
myself in the cover of my watch I saw a specimen of debauchery which
would have done credit to a Saturday night’s police cell.

By this time the sun had gone down, but I thought it better to kindle
no light. It was the night of the full moon—for which reason, I
supposed, Laputa had selected it—and in an hour or two the world would
be lit with that ghostly radiance. I sat on the counter while the
minutes passed, and I confess I found the time of waiting very trying
for my courage. I had got over my worst nervousness by having something
to do, but whenever I was idle my fears returned. Laputa had a big
night’s work before him, and must begin soon. My vigil, I told myself,
could not be long.

My pony was stalled in a rough shed we had built opposite the store. I
could hear him shaking his head and stamping the ground above the
croaking of the frogs by the Labongo. Presently it seemed to me that
another sound came from behind the store—the sound of horses’ feet and
the rattle of bridles. It was hushed for a moment, and then I heard
human voices. The riders had tied up their horses to a tree and were
coming nearer.

I sprawled gracefully on the counter, the empty bottle in my hand, and
my eyes fixed anxiously on the square of the door, which was filled
with the blue glimmer of the late twilight. The square darkened, and
two men peered in. Colin growled from below the counter, but with one
hand I held the scruff of his neck.

“Hullo,” I said, “ish that my black friend? Awfly shorry, old man, but
I’ve f’nish’d th’ whisky. The bo-o-ottle shempty,” and I waved it
upside down with an imbecile giggle.

Laputa said something which I did not catch. Henriques laughed an ugly
laugh.

“We had better make certain of him,” he said.

The two argued for a minute, and then Laputa seemed to prevail. The
door was shut and the key, which I had left in the lock, turned on me.

I gave them five minutes to get to the outhouse and settle to business.
Then I opened the trap, got into the cellar, and crawled to the other
end. A ray of light was coming through the partially raised door. By a
blessed chance some old bricks had been left behind, and of these I
made a footstool, which enabled me to get my back level with the door
and look out. My laager of barrels was intact, but through a gap I had
left I could see the two men sitting on the two cases I had provided
for them. A lantern was set between them, and Henriques was drinking
out of a metal flask.

He took something—I could not see what—out of his pocket, and held it
before his companion.

“Spoils of war,” he said. “I let Sikitola’s men draw first blood. They
needed it to screw up their courage. Now they are as wild as Umbooni’s.

Laputa asked a question.

“It was the Dutchmen, who were out on the Koodoo Flats with their
cattle. Man, it’s no good being squeamish. Do you think you can talk
over these surly back-veld fools? If we had not done it, the best of
their horses would now be over the Berg to give warning. Besides, I
tell you, Sikitola’s men wanted blooding. I did for the old swine,
Coetzee, with my own hands. Once he set his dogs on me, and I don’t
forget an injury.”

Laputa must have disapproved, for Henriques’ voice grew high.

“Run the show the way you please,” he cried; “but don’t blame me if you
make a hash of it. God, man, do you think you are going to work a
revolution on skim milk? If I had my will, I would go in and stick a
knife in the drunken hog next door.”

“He is safe enough,” Laputa replied. “I gave him the chance of life,
and he laughed at me. He won’t get far on his road home.”

This was pleasant hearing for me, but I scarcely thought of myself. I
was consumed with a passion of fury against the murdering yellow devil.
With Laputa I was not angry; he was an open enemy, playing a fair game.
But my fingers itched to get at the Portugoose—that double-dyed traitor
to his race. As I thought of my kindly old friends, lying butchered
with their kinsfolk out in the bush, hot tears of rage came to my eyes.
Perfect love casteth out fear, the Bible says; but, to speak it
reverently, so does perfect hate. Not for safety and a king’s ransom
would I have drawn back from the game. I prayed for one thing only,
that God in His mercy would give me the chance of settling with
Henriques.

I fancy I missed some of the conversation, being occupied with my own
passion. At any rate, when I next listened the two were deep in plans.
Maps were spread beside them, and Laputa’s delicate forefinger was
tracing a route. I strained my ears, but could catch only a few names.
Apparently they were to keep in the plains till they had crossed the
Klein Labongo and the Letaba. I thought I caught the name of the ford
of the latter; it sounded like Dupree’s Drift. After that the talk
became plainer, for Laputa was explaining in his clear voice. The force
would leave the bush, ascend the Berg by the glen of the Groot Letaba,
and the first halt would be called at a place called Inanda’s Kraal,
where a promontory of the high-veld juts out behind the peaks called
the Wolkberg or Cloud Mountains. All this was very much to the point,
and the names sunk into my memory like a die into wax.

“Meanwhile,” said Laputa, “there is the gathering at Ntabakaikonjwa.[1]
It will take us three hours’ hard riding to get there.”

Where on earth was Ntabakaikonjwa? It must be the native name for the
Rooirand, for after all Laputa was not likely to use the Dutch word for
his own sacred place.

“Nothing has been forgotten. The men are massed below the cliffs, and
the chiefs and the great indunas will enter the Place of the Snake. The
door will be guarded, and only the password will get a man through.
That word is ‘Immanuel,’ which means, ‘God with us.’”

“Well, when we get there, what happens?” Henriques asked with a laugh.
“What kind of magic will you spring on us?”

There was a strong contrast between the flippant tone of the Portugoose
and the grave voice which answered him.

“The Keeper of the Snake will open the holy place, and bring forth the
Isetembiso sami.[2] As the leader of my people, I will assume the
collar of Umkulunkulu in the name of our God and the spirits of the
great dead.”

“But you don’t propose to lead the march in a necklace of rubies,” said
Henriques, with a sudden eagerness in his voice.

Again Laputa spoke gravely, and, as it were, abstractedly. I heard the
voice of one whose mind was fixed on a far horizon.

“When I am acclaimed king, I restore the Snake to its Keeper, and swear
never to clasp it on my neck till I have led my people to victory.”

“I see,” said Henriques. “What about the purification you mentioned?”

I had missed this before and listened earnestly.

“The vows we take in the holy place bind us till we are purged of them
at Inanda’s Kraal. Till then no blood must be shed and no flesh eaten.
It was the fashion of our forefathers.”

“Well, I think you’ve taken on a pretty risky job,” Henriques said.
“You propose to travel a hundred miles, binding yourself not to strike
a blow. It is simply putting yourself at the mercy of any police
patrol.”

“There will be no patrol,” Laputa replied. “Our march will be as secret
and as swift as death. I have made my preparations.”

“But suppose you met with opposition,” the Portugoose persisted, “would
the rule hold?”

“If any try to stop us, we shall tie them hand and foot, and carry them
with us. Their fate will be worse than if they had been slain in
battle.”

“I see,” said Henriques, whistling through his teeth. “Well, before we
start this vow business, I think I’ll go back and settle that
storekeeper.”

Laputa shook his head. “Will you be serious and hear me? We have no
time to knife harmless fools. Before we start for Ntabakaikonjwa I must
have from you the figures of the arming in the south. That is the one
thing which remains to be settled.”

I am certain these figures would have been most interesting, but I
never heard them. My feet were getting cramped with standing on the
bricks, and I inadvertently moved them. The bricks came down with a
rattle, and unfortunately in slipping I clutched at the trap. This was
too much for my frail prop, and the door slammed down with a great
noise.

Here was a nice business for the eavesdropper! I scurried along the
passage as stealthily as I could and clambered back into the store,
while I heard the sound of Laputa and Henriques ferreting among the
barrels. I managed to throttle Colin and prevent him barking, but I
could not get the confounded trap to close behind me. Something had
jammed in it, and it remained half a foot open.

I heard the two approaching the door, and I did the best thing that
occurred to me. I pulled Colin over the trap, rolled on the top of him,
and began to snore heavily as if in a drunken slumber.

The key was turned, and the gleam of a lantern was thrown on the wall.
It flew up and down as its bearer cast the light into the corners.

“By God, he’s gone,” I heard Henriques say. “The swine was listening,
and he has bolted now.”

“He won’t bolt far,” Laputa said. “He is here. He is snoring behind the
counter.”

These were anxious moments for me. I had a firm grip on Colin’s throat,
but now and then a growl escaped, which was fortunately blended with my
snores. I felt that a lantern was flashed on me, and that the two men
were peering down at the heap on the half-opened trap. I think that was
the worst minute I ever spent, for, as I have said, my courage was not
so bad in action, but in a passive game it oozed out of my fingers.

“He is safe enough,” Laputa said, after what seemed to me an eternity.
“The noise was only the rats among the barrels.” I thanked my Maker
that they had not noticed the other trap-door. “All the same I think
I’ll make him safer,” said Henriques.

Laputa seemed to have caught him by the arm.

“Come back and get to business,” he said. “I’ve told you I’ll have no
more murder. You will do as I tell you, Mr Henriques.”

I did not catch the answer, but the two went out and locked the door. I
patted the outraged Colin, and got to my feet with an aching side where
the confounded lid of the trap had been pressing. There was no time to
lose for the two in the outhouse would soon be setting out, and I must
be before them.

With no better light than a ray of the moon through the window, I wrote
a message on a leaf from my pocket-book. I told of the plans I had
overheard, and especially I mentioned Dupree’s Drift on the Letaba. I
added that I was going to the Rooirand to find the secret of the cave,
and in one final sentence implored Arcoll to do justice on the
Portugoose. That was all, for I had no time for more. I carefully tied
the paper with a string below the collar of the dog.

Then very quietly I went into the bedroom next door—the side of the
store farthest from the outhouse. The place was flooded with moonlight,
and the window stood open, as I had left it in the afternoon. As softly
as I could I swung Colin over the sill and clambered after him. In my
haste I left my coat behind me with my pistol in the pocket.

Now came a check. My horse was stabled in the shed, and that was close
to the outhouse. The sound of leading him out would most certainly
bring Laputa and Henriques to the door. In that moment I all but
changed my plans. I thought of slipping back to the outhouse and trying
to shoot the two men as they came forth. But I reflected that, before I
could get them both, one or other would probably shoot me. Besides, I
had a queer sort of compunction about killing Laputa. I understood now
why Arcoll had stayed his hand from murder, and I was beginning to be
of his opinion on our arch-enemy.

Then I remembered the horses tied up in the bush. One of them I could
get with perfect safety. I ran round the end of the store and into the
thicket, keeping on soft grass to dull my tread. There, tied up to a
merula tree, were two of the finest beasts I had seen in Africa. I
selected the better, an Africander stallion of the _blaauw-schimmel_,
or blue-roan type, which is famous for speed and endurance. Slipping
his bridle from the branch, I led him a little way into the bush in the
direction of the Rooirand.

Then I spoke to Colin. “Home with you,” I said. “Home, old man, as if
you were running down a tsessebe.”[3]

The dog seemed puzzled. “Home,” I said again, pointing west in the
direction of the Berg. “Home, you brute.”

And then he understood. He gave one low whine, and cast a reproachful
eye on me and the blue roan. Then he turned, and with his head down set
off with great lopes on the track of the road I had ridden in the
morning.

A second later and I was in the saddle, riding hell-for-leather for the
north.

[1] Literally, “The Hill which is not to be pointed at”.

[2] Literally, “Very sacred thing”.

[3] A species of buck, famous for its speed.




CHAPTER X
I GO TREASURE-HUNTING


For a mile or so I kept the bush, which was open and easy to ride
through, and then turned into the path. The moon was high, and the
world was all a dim dark green, with the track a golden ivory band
before me. I had looked at my watch before I started, and seen that it
was just after eight o’clock. I had a great horse under me, and less
than thirty miles to cover. Midnight should see me at the cave. With
the password I would gain admittance, and there would wait for Laputa
and Henriques. Then, if my luck held, I should see the inner workings
of the mystery which had puzzled me ever since the Kirkcaple shore. No
doubt I should be roughly treated, tied up prisoner, and carried with
the army when the march began. But till Inanda’s Kraal my life was
safe, and before that came the ford of the Letaba. Colin would carry my
message to Arcoll, and at the Drift the tables would be turned on
Laputa’s men.

Looking back in cold blood, it seems the craziest chain of accidents to
count on for preservation. A dozen possibilities might have shattered
any link of it. The password might be wrong, or I might never get the
length of those who knew it. The men in the cave might butcher me out
of hand, or Laputa might think my behaviour a sufficient warrant for
the breach of the solemnest vow. Colin might never get to
Blaauwildebeestefontein, Laputa might change his route of march, or
Arcoll’s men might fail to hold the Drift. Indeed, the other day at
Portincross I was so overcome by the recollection of the perils I had
dared and God’s goodness towards me that I built a new hall for the
parish kirk as a token of gratitude.

Fortunately for mankind the brain in a life of action turns more to the
matter in hand than to conjuring up the chances of the future.
Certainly it was in no discomfort of mind that I swung along the
moonlit path to the north. Truth to tell, I was almost happy. The first
honours in the game had fallen to me. I knew more about Laputa than any
man living save Henriques; I had my finger on the central pulse of the
rebellion. There was hid treasure ahead of me—a great necklace of
rubies, Henriques had said. Nay, there must be more, I argued. This
cave of the Rooirand was the headquarters of the rising, and there must
be stored their funds—diamonds, and the gold they had been bartered
for. I believe that every man has deep in his soul a passion for
treasure-hunting, which will often drive a coward into prodigies of
valour. I lusted for that treasure of jewels and gold. Once I had been
high-minded, and thought of my duty to my country, but in that night
ride I fear that what I thought of was my duty to enrich David
Crawfurd. One other purpose simmered in my head. I was devoured with
wrath against Henriques. Indeed, I think that was the strongest motive
for my escapade, for even before I heard Laputa tell of the vows and
the purification, I had it in my mind to go at all costs to the cave. I
am a peaceable man at most times, but I think I would rather have had
the Portugoose’s throat in my hands than the collar of Prester John.

But behind my thoughts was one master-feeling, that Providence had
given me my chance and I must make the most of it. Perhaps the
Calvinism of my father’s preaching had unconsciously taken grip of my
soul. At any rate I was a fatalist in creed, believing that what was
willed would happen, and that man was but a puppet in the hands of his
Maker. I looked on the last months as a clear course which had been
mapped out for me. Not for nothing had I been given a clue to the
strange events which were coming. It was foreordained that I should go
alone to Umvelos’, and in the promptings of my own fallible heart I
believed I saw the workings of Omnipotence. Such is our moral
arrogance, and yet without such a belief I think that mankind would
have ever been content to bide sluggishly at home.

I passed the spot where on my former journey I had met the horses, and
knew that I had covered more than half the road. My ear had been alert
for the sound of pursuit, but the bush was quiet as the grave. The man
who rode my pony would find him a slow traveller, and I pitied the poor
beast bucketed along by an angry rider. Gradually a hazy wall of purple
began to shimmer before me, apparently very far off. I knew the
ramparts of the Rooirand, and let my _schimmel_ feel my knees in his
ribs. Within an hour I should be at the cliff’s foot.

I had trusted for safety to the password, but as it turned out I owed
my life mainly to my horse. For, a mile or so from the cliffs, I came
to the fringes of a great army. The bush was teeming with men, and I
saw horses picketed in bunches, and a multitude of Cape-carts and light
wagons. It was like a colossal gathering for _naachtmaal_[1] at a Dutch
dorp, but every man was black. I saw through a corner of my eye that
they were armed with guns, though many carried in addition their spears
and shields. Their first impulse was to stop me. I saw guns fly to
shoulders, and a rush towards the path. The boldest game was the
safest, so I dug my heels into the _schimmel_ and shouted for a
passage. “Make way!” I cried in Kaffir. “I bear a message from the
Inkulu.[2] Clear out, you dogs!”

They recognized the horse, and fell back with a salute. Had I but known
it, the beast was famed from the Zambesi to the Cape. It was their
king’s own charger I rode, and who dared question such a warrant? I
heard the word pass through the bush, and all down the road I got the
salute. In that moment I fervently thanked my stars that I had got away
first, for there would have been no coming second for me.

At the cliff-foot I found a double line of warriors who had the
appearance of a royal guard, for all were tall men with leopard-skin
cloaks. Their rifle-barrels glinted in the moon-light, and the sight
sent a cold shiver down my back. Above them, among the scrub and along
the lower slopes of the kranzes, I could see further lines with the
same gleaming weapons. The Place of the Snake was in strong hands that
night.

I dismounted and called for a man to take my horse. Two of the guards
stepped forward in silence and took the bridle. This left the track to
the cave open, and with as stiff a back as I could command, but a sadly
fluttering heart, I marched through the ranks.

The path was lined with guards, all silent and rigid as graven images.
As I stumbled over the stones I felt that my appearance scarcely fitted
the dignity of a royal messenger. Among those splendid men-at-arms I
shambled along in old breeches and leggings, hatless, with a dirty
face, dishevelled hair, and a torn flannel shirt. My mind was no better
than my body, for now that I had arrived I found my courage gone. Had
it been possible I would have turned tail and fled, but the boats were
burned behind me, and I had no choice. I cursed my rash folly, and
wondered at my exhilaration of an hour ago. I was going into the black
mysterious darkness, peopled by ten thousand cruel foes. My knees
rubbed against each other, and I thought that no man had ever been in
more deadly danger.

At the entrance to the gorge the guards ceased and I went on alone.
Here there was no moonlight, and I had to feel my way by the sides. I
moved very slowly, wondering how soon I should find the end my folly
demanded. The heat of the ride had gone, and I remember feeling my
shirt hang clammily on my shoulders.

Suddenly a hand was laid on my breast, and a voice demanded, “The
word?”

“Immanuel,” I said hoarsely.

Then unseen hands took both my arms, and I was led farther into the
darkness. My hopes revived for a second. The password had proved true,
and at any rate I should enter the cave.

In the darkness I could see nothing, but I judged that we stopped
before the stone slab which, as I remembered, filled the extreme end of
the gorge. My guide did something with the right-hand wall, and I felt
myself being drawn into a kind of passage. It was so narrow that two
could not go abreast, and so low that the creepers above scraped my
hair. Something clicked behind me like the turnstile at the gate of a
show.

Then we began to ascend steps, still in utter darkness, and a great
booming fell on my ear. It was the falling river which had scared me on
my former visit, and I marvelled that I had not heard it sooner.
Presently we came out into a gleam of moonlight, and I saw that we were
inside the gorge and far above the slab. We followed a narrow shelf on
its left side (or “true right”, as mountaineers would call it) until we
could go no farther. Then we did a terrible thing. Across the gorge,
which here was at its narrowest, stretched a slab of stone. Far, far
below I caught the moonlight on a mass of hurrying waters. This was our
bridge, and though I have a good head for crags, I confess I grew dizzy
as we turned to cross it. Perhaps it was broader than it looked; at any
rate my guides seemed to have no fear, and strode across it as if it
was a highway, while I followed in a sweat of fright. Once on the other
side, I was handed over to a second pair of guides, who led me down a
high passage running into the heart of the mountain.

The boom of the river sank and rose as the passage twined. Soon I saw a
gleam of light ahead which was not the moon. It grew larger, until
suddenly the roof rose and I found myself in a gigantic chamber. So
high it was that I could not make out anything of the roof, though the
place was brightly lit with torches stuck round the wall, and a great
fire which burned at the farther end. But the wonder was on the left
side, where the floor ceased in a chasm. The left wall was one sheet of
water, where the river fell from the heights into the infinite depth,
below. The torches and the fire made the sheer stream glow and sparkle
like the battlements of the Heavenly City. I have never seen any sight
so beautiful or so strange, and for a second my breath stopped in
admiration.

There were two hundred men or more in the chamber, but so huge was the
place that they seemed only a little company. They sat on the ground in
a circle, with their eyes fixed on the fire and on a figure which stood
before it. The glow revealed the old man I had seen on that morning a
month before moving towards the cave. He stood as if in a trance,
straight as a tree, with his arms crossed on his breast. A robe of some
shining white stuff fell from his shoulders, and was clasped round his
middle by a broad circle of gold. His head was shaven, and on his
forehead was bound a disc of carved gold. I saw from his gaze that his
old eyes were blind.

“Who comes?” he asked as I entered.

“A messenger from the Inkulu,” I spoke up boldly. “He follows soon with
the white man, Henriques.”

Then I sat down in the back row of the circle to await events. I
noticed that my neighbour was the fellow ’Mwanga whom I had kicked out
of the store. Happily I was so dusty that he could scarcely recognize
me, but I kept my face turned away from him. What with the light and
the warmth, the drone of the water, the silence of the folk, and my
mental and physical stress, I grew drowsy and all but slept.

[1] The Communion Sabbath.

[2] A title applied only to the greatest chiefs.




CHAPTER XI
THE CAVE OF THE ROOIRAND


I was roused by a sudden movement. The whole assembly stood up, and
each man clapped his right hand to his brow and then raised it high. A
low murmur of “Inkulu” rose above the din of the water. Laputa strode
down the hall, with Henriques limping behind him. They certainly did
not suspect my presence in the cave, nor did Laputa show any ruffling
of his calm. Only Henriques looked weary and cross. I guessed he had
had to ride my pony.

The old man whom I took to be the priest advanced towards Laputa with
his hands raised over his head. A pace before they met he halted, and
Laputa went on his knees before him. He placed his hands on his head,
and spoke some words which I could not understand. It reminded me, so
queer are the tricks of memory, of an old Sabbath-school book I used to
have which had a picture of Samuel ordaining Saul as king of Israel. I
think I had forgotten my own peril and was enthralled by the majesty of
the place—the wavering torches, the dropping wall of green water, above
all, the figures of Laputa and the Keeper of the Snake, who seemed to
have stepped out of an antique world.

Laputa stripped off his leopard skin till he stood stark, a noble form
of a man. Then the priest sprinkled some herbs on the fire, and a thin
smoke rose to the roof. The smell was that I had smelled on the
Kirkcaple shore, sweet, sharp, and strange enough to chill the marrow.
And round the fire went the priest in widening and contracting circles,
just as on that Sabbath evening in spring.

Once more we were sitting on the ground, all except Laputa and the
Keeper. Henriques was squatting in the front row, a tiny creature among
so many burly savages. Laputa stood with bent head in the centre.

Then a song began, a wild incantation in which all joined. The old
priest would speak some words, and the reply came in barbaric music.
The words meant nothing to me; they must have been in some tongue long
since dead. But the music told its own tale. It spoke of old kings and
great battles, of splendid palaces and strong battlements, of queens
white as ivory, of death and life, love and hate, joy and sorrow. It
spoke, too, of desperate things, mysteries of horror long shut to the
world. No Kaffir ever forged that ritual. It must have come straight
from Prester John or Sheba’s queen, or whoever ruled in Africa when
time was young.

I was horribly impressed. Devouring curiosity and a lurking nameless
fear filled my mind. My old dread had gone. I was not afraid now of
Kaffir guns, but of the black magic of which Laputa had the key.

The incantation died away, but still herbs were flung on the fire, till
the smoke rose in a great cloud, through which the priest loomed misty
and huge. Out of the smoke-wreaths his voice came high and strange. It
was as if some treble stop had been opened in a great organ, as against
the bass drone of the cataract.

He was asking Laputa questions, to which came answers in that rich
voice which on board the liner had preached the gospel of Christ. The
tongue I did not know, and I doubt if my neighbours were in better
case. It must have been some old sacred language—Phoenician, Sabaean, I
know not what—which had survived in the rite of the Snake.

Then came silence while the fire died down and the smoke eddied away in
wreaths towards the river. The priest’s lips moved as if in prayer: of
Laputa I saw only the back, and his head was bowed.

Suddenly a rapt cry broke from the Keeper. “God has spoken,” he cried.
“The path is clear. The Snake returns to the House of its Birth.”

An attendant led forward a black goat, which bleated feebly. With a
huge antique knife the old man slit its throat, catching the blood in a
stone ewer. Some was flung on the fire, which had burned small and low.

“Even so,” cried the priest, “will the king quench in blood the
hearth-fires of his foes.”

Then on Laputa’s forehead and bare breast he drew a bloody cross. “I
seal thee,” said the voice, “priest and king of God’s people.” The ewer
was carried round the assembly, and each dipped his finger in it and
marked his forehead. I got a dab to add to the other marks on my face.

“Priest and king of God’s people,” said the voice again, “I call thee
to the inheritance of John. Priest and king was he, king of kings, lord
of hosts, master of the earth. When he ascended on high he left to his
son the sacred Snake, the ark of his valour, to be God’s dower and
pledge to the people whom He has chosen.”

I could not make out what followed. It seemed to be a long roll of the
kings who had borne the Snake. None of them I knew, but at the end I
thought I caught the name of Tchaka the Terrible, and I remembered
Arcoll’s tale.

The Keeper held in his arms a box of curiously wrought ivory, about two
feet long and one broad. He was standing beyond the ashes, from which,
in spite of the blood, thin streams of smoke still ascended. He opened
it, and drew out something which swung from his hand like a cascade of
red fire.

“Behold the Snake,” cried the Keeper, and every man in the assembly,
excepting Laputa and including me, bowed his head to the ground and
cried “Ow.”

“Ye who have seen the Snake,” came the voice, “on you is the vow of
silence and peace. No blood shall ye shed of man or beast, no flesh
shall ye eat till the vow is taken from you. From the hour of midnight
till sunrise on the second day ye are bound to God. Whoever shall break
the vow, on him shall the curse fall. His blood shall dry in his veins,
and his flesh shrink on his bones. He shall be an outlaw and accursed,
and there shall follow him through life and death the Avengers of the
Snake. Choose ye, my people; upon you is the vow.”

By this time we were all flat on our faces, and a great cry of assent
went up. I lifted my head as much as I dared to see what would happen
next.

The priest raised the necklace till it shone above his head like a halo
of blood. I have never seen such a jewel, and I think there has never
been another such on earth. Later I was to have the handling of it, and
could examine it closely, though now I had only a glimpse. There were
fifty-five rubies in it, the largest as big as a pigeon’s egg, and the
least not smaller than my thumbnail. In shape they were oval, cut on
both sides en cabochon, and on each certain characters were engraved.
No doubt this detracted from their value as gems, yet the characters
might have been removed and the stones cut in facets, and these rubies
would still have been the noblest in the world. I was no jewel merchant
to guess their value, but I knew enough to see that here was wealth
beyond human computation. At each end of the string was a great pearl
and a golden clasp. The sight absorbed me to the exclusion of all fear.
I, David Crawfurd, nineteen years of age, an assistant-storekeeper in a
back-veld dorp, was privileged to see a sight to which no Portuguese
adventurer had ever attained. There, floating on the smoke-wreaths, was
the jewel which may once have burned in Sheba’s hair. As the priest
held the collar aloft, the assembly rocked with a strange passion.
Foreheads were rubbed in the dust, and then adoring eyes would be
raised, while a kind of sobbing shook the worshippers. In that moment I
learned something of the secret of Africa, of Prester John’s empire and
Tchaka’s victories.

“In the name of God,” came the voice, “I deliver to the heir of John
the Snake of John.”

Laputa took the necklet and twined it in two loops round his neck till
the clasp hung down over his breast. The position changed. The priest
knelt before him, and received his hands on his head. Then I knew that,
to the confusion of all talk about equality, God has ordained some men
to be kings and others to serve. Laputa stood naked as when he was
born. The rubies were dulled against the background of his skin, but
they still shone with a dusky fire. Above the blood-red collar his face
had the passive pride of a Roman emperor. Only his great eyes gloomed
and burned as he looked on his followers.

“Heir of John,” he said, “I stand before you as priest and king. My
kingship is for the morrow. Now I am the priest to make intercession
for my people.”

He prayed—prayed as I never heard man pray before—and to the God of
Israel! It was no heathen fetich he was invoking, but the God of whom
he had often preached in Christian kirks. I recognized texts from
Isaiah and the Psalms and the Gospels, and very especially from the two
last chapters of Revelation. He pled with God to forget the sins of his
people, to recall the bondage of Zion. It was amazing to hear these
bloodthirsty savages consecrated by their leader to the meek service of
Christ. An enthusiast may deceive himself, and I did not question his
sincerity. I knew his heart, black with all the lusts of paganism. I
knew that his purpose was to deluge the land with blood. But I knew
also that in his eyes his mission was divine, and that he felt behind
him all the armies of Heaven.

_“Thou hast been a strength to the poor,” said the voice, “a refuge
from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the Terrible
Ones is as a storm against a wall._

_“Thou shalt bring down the noise of strangers, as the heat in a dry
place; the branch of the Terrible Ones shall be brought low._

_“And in this mountain shall the Lord of Hosts make unto all people a
feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full
of marrow._

_“And He will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast
over all people, and the vail that is brought over all nations._

_“And the rebuke of His people shall He take away from off all the
earth; for the Lord hath spoken it.”_

I listened spellbound as he prayed. I heard the phrases familiar to me
in my schooldays at Kirkcaple. He had some of the tones of my father’s
voice, and when I shut my eyes I could have believed myself a child
again. So much he had got from his apprenticeship to the ministry. I
wondered vaguely what the good folks who had listened to him in
churches and halls at home would think of him now. But there was in the
prayer more than the supplications of the quondam preacher. There was a
tone of arrogant pride, the pride of the man to whom the Almighty is
only another and greater Lord of Hosts. He prayed less as a suppliant
than as an ally. A strange emotion tingled in my blood, half awe, half
sympathy. As I have said, I understood that there are men born to
kingship.

He ceased with a benediction. Then he put on his leopard-skin cloak and
kilt, and received from the kneeling chief a spear and shield. Now he
was more king than priest, more barbarian than Christian. It was as a
king that he now spoke.

I had heard him on board the liner, and had thought his voice the most
wonderful I had ever met with. But now in that great resonant hall the
magic of it was doubled. He played upon the souls of his hearers as on
a musical instrument. At will he struck the chords of pride, fury,
hate, and mad joy. Now t

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