Chapter Six.

Chapter Six.Further Festivity.“Near thing that,” I said.“Near thing? By Jove, I believe you!” echoed Falkner, who had halted, considerably out of wind and temper; the latter not improved by certain scarcely smothered and half-averted laughs which escaped some of the spectators. “Why I do believe the infernal sweeps are having the grin of me,” he added, scowling at them.“We’ll enter into the joke yourself, just as you would have done if it had been some other fellow. That would have struck you as funny, eh? and this strikes them. They don’t mean anything by it.”“Oh well, I suppose not,” he growled, and I felt relieved, for he was quite capable of kicking up some silly row then and there, which would have been unpleasant, if not worse.“Let’s go back,” I suggested. “The noble savage engaged in the most congenial occupation of his heart, that of butchery, is not seen at his best.”“I should think not. Look at those fellows over there. Why they’re beginning on the stuff raw. Nasty beggars!”“There are certain tit-bits they like that way, just as we do our snipe and woodcock and teal—or say we do.”In truth the groups engaged upon each carcase were not pleasant to the eye—although thoroughly enjoying themselves—and we left them.“I say, Glanton, though,” he went on, “I believe I came devilish near getting badly mauled by that beastly cow. The nigger who ripped in that assegai did so in the nick of time. I’d like to give him half-a-crown.”“Hand over then, Sewin. Here’s the nigger.”“What? You?”“Me.”“But the beast was going full bat.”“Well, a cow’s a good big target even at twenty yards,” I said.He whistled. “By Jove!Icouldn’t have done it.”For once I was able to agree with him.We had dinner in the open, under the waggon sail which I had rigged up as shelter from the sun, and which now did duty to give shelter from the dew.“I’m afraid it’s all game fare to-night, Mrs Sewin,” I said. “This is roast bush-buck haunch, and that unsightly looking pot there beside the Major contains a regular up-country game stew. I rather pride myself on it, and it holds five different kinds of birds, besides bacon, and odd notions in the way of pepper, etc.”“And that’s what you call roughing it,” was the answer. “Why, it looks simply delicious.”“By Jove, Glanton, we must get the recipe from you,” said the Major when he had sampled it. “I never ate anything so good in my life.”Tom and another boy in the background, were deft when help was required, and I know that if anybody ever enjoyed their dinner my guests did on that occasion. And upon my word they might well have done so, for trust an old up-country man for knowing how to make the best of the products of the veldt; and the best is very good indeed. And as we partook of this, by the light of a couple of waggon lanterns, slung from the poles of our improvised tent, the surroundings were in keeping. On the open side lay a panorama rapidly growing more and more dim as the stars began to twinkle forth, a sweep of darkening country of something like fifty or sixty miles, reaching away in the far distance beyond the Blood River, on the left, and immediately in front, beyond the Tugela, the wooded river bank and open plains and rocky hills of Zululand. Then, suffusing the far horizon like the glow of some mighty grass fire, the great disc of a broad full moon soared redly upward, putting out the stars.“Now this is what I call uncommonly jolly,” pronounced the Major, leaning back in his chair, and blowing out the first puffs of his after dinner pipe.“Hear—hear!” sung out Falkner. And then, warmed up into a glow of generosity by a good dinner and plenty of grog, I’m blest if the fellow didn’t trot out quite a yarn about the cow chevying him and my timely assegai throw; whereupon there was a disposition to make a hero of me on the spot.“Pooh! The thing was nothing at all,” I objected. “An everyday affair, if you’re working with unbroken cattle.”Yet there was one face which expressed more than the others, expressed in fact unbounded approval, as it was turned full on me with that straight frank gaze, and I exulted inwardly, but then came a thought that dashed everything and was as a judgment upon my quite unwarrantable conceit. This was it. What if they are engaged, and that full, frank look of approval is one of gratitude that I should have saved—if not the life of the other—at any rate the certainty of him being badly injured? It is singular that no such idea had ever occurred to me before, but it did now, and seemed to lend significance to certain signs of resentment and ill-will which I had noticed on Falkner’s part on occasions where his cousin was concerned. And the thought was a thoroughly disquieting one, I admit.“Listen! Here they come,” I said, holding up a hand. “The entertainment is about to begin.”The distant and deep-toned hum of conversation had reached us from where our dusky entertainers were enjoying their feast, and an occasional outburst of laughter. Now, instead, came the regular rhythm of a savage song, drawing nearer and nearer.“I think we can’t do better than let them perform just in front here,” I went on. “The ground’s open, and the moon almost as bright as day.”This was agreed to enthusiastically, and soon the singing grew louder and louder, and the whole body in their picturesque gear, came marching up, beating time upon their shields with sticks and assegai hafts. They halted in half moon formation and one man stepping out from the rest, gave the sign for silence. Then having saluted us with muchsibongo, he led off, in a sort of chant, loud and clear at first, then rising higher and higher. The others took it up at a given point in response, and although the song did not run to many notes, it was soon thundered aloud in a harmonious wave of sound. When it had attained its highest pitch, at a sign from thechoragusit ceased—ceased with such suddenness as to impart an impression that was positively uneasy.“Dashed effective, by Jove!” pronounced the Major, breaking the spell.“Why, it is beautiful—positively beautiful,” declared Miss Sewin. “The harmony and the rhythmic waves of sound are perfect. Tell me, Mr Glanton, what was it all about?”“Oh, it was merely a song of welcome, improvised over yonder while they were scoffing my cows.”“Really? Do you mean to say it was all impromptu?”“Of course. That’s the way these people do things.”“Won’t they go over it again?”“Oh, there’s plenty more to come. Rather too soon for an encore yet.”While I spoke they were forming up again. This time they broke up into a hunting song. When it seemed to have gained its height, it suddenly ceased, and all darted away across the veldt till nearly out of sight in the moonlight.“What the deuce are they up to now?” said Falkner, filling his pipe.“You’ll see. Listen. Now they are returning with the game.”Again the voices broke forth, now returning as I had said, and swelling higher and higher, in a long recitative uttered by some dozen, and replied to in rolling chorus by the whole body.“They are recounting their exploits now—what game they have got, and how they got it,” I explained, as the singing ceased.“By Jove, are they?” cried Falkner. “Look here, Glanton, I’ve got an idea. How would it be to scare up a hunt to-morrow, and get a lot of these chaps to help? I’d like to see how they go to work in their own way. That would be worth seeing.”“Well, it might be managed. What d’you think, Major?”“A capital idea. But—hang it, we haven’t got our guns.”“Oh, as to that,” I said, “you could use mine. There’s a shot gun and a rifle, and a rifle and smooth-bore combined. That’ll arm all hands.”“Well done, Glanton. You’re a jewel of a chap!” cried Falkner, boisterously. “The very thing. But, I say. How about arranging it with them now. No time like the present, eh?”The idea appealed to me exceedingly, not for its own sake, I fear, but because it would afford an opportunity of detaining my guests—or shall we say one of them—yet longer, perhaps even another night, for it would be hard if I could not manage to prolong the hunt until too late for them to return. Really Falkner Sewin was not without his uses in the world.“I think it would be simply delightful!” interjected that “one of them.” “We will be able to see some of it too, won’t we, Mr Glanton?”“Why of course, Miss Sewin. I’ll send the boys up to some convenient spot with lunch and we’ll make a regular picnic of it.”The idea was received with enthusiasm. Only Mrs Sewin somewhat faintly objected that they had a long way to go to get home afterwards. But this I over-ruled by hoping they would not find my poor accommodation so very trying that the prospect of another night of it—if the worst came to the worst—should prove entirely out of the question.Just then a group of men detached themselves from the rest, and came over to us, to salute and ask how we liked the performance.“This is Wabisa, the next biggest chief under Tyingoza,” I said, introducing the foremost, a tall, dignified head-ringed man. “Now, Miss Sewin, here is a real chief. Tyingoza could not come to-night, but will to-morrow morning.”“I’m so glad,” she answered, looking at Wabisa with interest.I gave them some roll tobacco which I had ready for them, and told my boys to make them some coffee. The while I arranged for to-morrow’s bush-buck hunt. There was no difficulty about it at all, even as I had expected. I could have as many boys as I wanted.“They must hunt too, Wabisa,” I said. “The whiteamakosiwant to see if the assegai is a better weapon than the gun.”“Ou! That they shall see,” laughed the chief.“Is there going to be any more dancing, Mr Glanton?” said the youngest girl.“Yes. The best part. They’re going to give us the war dance now,” and I suggested to Wabisa that it was getting late, and the white ladies might be growing tired.Of all native dances a war dance is the most catching, and this had not long started before even the old Major found himself beating time with his feet, while as for Falkner, it was all I could do to prevent him from rushing in among them to take his part. The chant now rose quickly to a ferocious roar, and as the dancers swayed and crouched, turning half round, then leaping erect, while going through the pantomime of striking an enemy, to the accompaniment of a strident death hiss, the whole scene was vivid and realistic enough to have rendered some people decidedly nervous. Then the thunderous stamping of six hundred feet, the beating of sticks on shields, and the shrilling rattle of assegai hafts—a sound not quite like any other I ever heard, and I’ve heard it often—add to this the rolling of fierce eyeballs, and the waving of tufted shields in the moonlight and you have a picture unrivalled for thrilling and at the same time exhilarating terror. A gasp as of involuntary relief went up from my guests as the thunder and racket ceased with a suddenness of silence that was almost appalling in contrast Miss Sewin was the first to speak.“It is perfectly magnificent,” she declared. “I for one don’t know how to thank you, Mr Glanton, for giving us such a splendid entertainment.”I was rarely pleased at this, and mumbled something—probably idiotic.“I suppose it isn’t much to you,” she went on. “You must have seen it often, and the real thing too.”“Well yes. I have, and done by more thousands than there are hundreds here. By the way, I’m giving them a little more beef for to-morrow morning so they’ll be in high trim and good humour for our hunt.”“Oh, I’m afraid you are going to a great deal of trouble on our account,” she said.“Isn’t it worth it—at least—I mean—er—it isn’t often one can afford anyone a new kind of pleasure in this worn-out world,” I added lamely. But I believe she read my original meaning for I could see a soft look come into the beautiful clear eyes in the moonlight, and there was a half smile curving her lips. We were talking a little apart from the others who had embarked on a voluble discussion of their own. And then it was voted time for bed, and the natives having dispersed, after a sonorously uttered farewell salute, the Major and Falkner and I had a final glass of grog, or so, and adjourned to our quarters in the store.

“Near thing that,” I said.

“Near thing? By Jove, I believe you!” echoed Falkner, who had halted, considerably out of wind and temper; the latter not improved by certain scarcely smothered and half-averted laughs which escaped some of the spectators. “Why I do believe the infernal sweeps are having the grin of me,” he added, scowling at them.

“We’ll enter into the joke yourself, just as you would have done if it had been some other fellow. That would have struck you as funny, eh? and this strikes them. They don’t mean anything by it.”

“Oh well, I suppose not,” he growled, and I felt relieved, for he was quite capable of kicking up some silly row then and there, which would have been unpleasant, if not worse.

“Let’s go back,” I suggested. “The noble savage engaged in the most congenial occupation of his heart, that of butchery, is not seen at his best.”

“I should think not. Look at those fellows over there. Why they’re beginning on the stuff raw. Nasty beggars!”

“There are certain tit-bits they like that way, just as we do our snipe and woodcock and teal—or say we do.”

In truth the groups engaged upon each carcase were not pleasant to the eye—although thoroughly enjoying themselves—and we left them.

“I say, Glanton, though,” he went on, “I believe I came devilish near getting badly mauled by that beastly cow. The nigger who ripped in that assegai did so in the nick of time. I’d like to give him half-a-crown.”

“Hand over then, Sewin. Here’s the nigger.”

“What? You?”

“Me.”

“But the beast was going full bat.”

“Well, a cow’s a good big target even at twenty yards,” I said.

He whistled. “By Jove!Icouldn’t have done it.”

For once I was able to agree with him.

We had dinner in the open, under the waggon sail which I had rigged up as shelter from the sun, and which now did duty to give shelter from the dew.

“I’m afraid it’s all game fare to-night, Mrs Sewin,” I said. “This is roast bush-buck haunch, and that unsightly looking pot there beside the Major contains a regular up-country game stew. I rather pride myself on it, and it holds five different kinds of birds, besides bacon, and odd notions in the way of pepper, etc.”

“And that’s what you call roughing it,” was the answer. “Why, it looks simply delicious.”

“By Jove, Glanton, we must get the recipe from you,” said the Major when he had sampled it. “I never ate anything so good in my life.”

Tom and another boy in the background, were deft when help was required, and I know that if anybody ever enjoyed their dinner my guests did on that occasion. And upon my word they might well have done so, for trust an old up-country man for knowing how to make the best of the products of the veldt; and the best is very good indeed. And as we partook of this, by the light of a couple of waggon lanterns, slung from the poles of our improvised tent, the surroundings were in keeping. On the open side lay a panorama rapidly growing more and more dim as the stars began to twinkle forth, a sweep of darkening country of something like fifty or sixty miles, reaching away in the far distance beyond the Blood River, on the left, and immediately in front, beyond the Tugela, the wooded river bank and open plains and rocky hills of Zululand. Then, suffusing the far horizon like the glow of some mighty grass fire, the great disc of a broad full moon soared redly upward, putting out the stars.

“Now this is what I call uncommonly jolly,” pronounced the Major, leaning back in his chair, and blowing out the first puffs of his after dinner pipe.

“Hear—hear!” sung out Falkner. And then, warmed up into a glow of generosity by a good dinner and plenty of grog, I’m blest if the fellow didn’t trot out quite a yarn about the cow chevying him and my timely assegai throw; whereupon there was a disposition to make a hero of me on the spot.

“Pooh! The thing was nothing at all,” I objected. “An everyday affair, if you’re working with unbroken cattle.”

Yet there was one face which expressed more than the others, expressed in fact unbounded approval, as it was turned full on me with that straight frank gaze, and I exulted inwardly, but then came a thought that dashed everything and was as a judgment upon my quite unwarrantable conceit. This was it. What if they are engaged, and that full, frank look of approval is one of gratitude that I should have saved—if not the life of the other—at any rate the certainty of him being badly injured? It is singular that no such idea had ever occurred to me before, but it did now, and seemed to lend significance to certain signs of resentment and ill-will which I had noticed on Falkner’s part on occasions where his cousin was concerned. And the thought was a thoroughly disquieting one, I admit.

“Listen! Here they come,” I said, holding up a hand. “The entertainment is about to begin.”

The distant and deep-toned hum of conversation had reached us from where our dusky entertainers were enjoying their feast, and an occasional outburst of laughter. Now, instead, came the regular rhythm of a savage song, drawing nearer and nearer.

“I think we can’t do better than let them perform just in front here,” I went on. “The ground’s open, and the moon almost as bright as day.”

This was agreed to enthusiastically, and soon the singing grew louder and louder, and the whole body in their picturesque gear, came marching up, beating time upon their shields with sticks and assegai hafts. They halted in half moon formation and one man stepping out from the rest, gave the sign for silence. Then having saluted us with muchsibongo, he led off, in a sort of chant, loud and clear at first, then rising higher and higher. The others took it up at a given point in response, and although the song did not run to many notes, it was soon thundered aloud in a harmonious wave of sound. When it had attained its highest pitch, at a sign from thechoragusit ceased—ceased with such suddenness as to impart an impression that was positively uneasy.

“Dashed effective, by Jove!” pronounced the Major, breaking the spell.

“Why, it is beautiful—positively beautiful,” declared Miss Sewin. “The harmony and the rhythmic waves of sound are perfect. Tell me, Mr Glanton, what was it all about?”

“Oh, it was merely a song of welcome, improvised over yonder while they were scoffing my cows.”

“Really? Do you mean to say it was all impromptu?”

“Of course. That’s the way these people do things.”

“Won’t they go over it again?”

“Oh, there’s plenty more to come. Rather too soon for an encore yet.”

While I spoke they were forming up again. This time they broke up into a hunting song. When it seemed to have gained its height, it suddenly ceased, and all darted away across the veldt till nearly out of sight in the moonlight.

“What the deuce are they up to now?” said Falkner, filling his pipe.

“You’ll see. Listen. Now they are returning with the game.”

Again the voices broke forth, now returning as I had said, and swelling higher and higher, in a long recitative uttered by some dozen, and replied to in rolling chorus by the whole body.

“They are recounting their exploits now—what game they have got, and how they got it,” I explained, as the singing ceased.

“By Jove, are they?” cried Falkner. “Look here, Glanton, I’ve got an idea. How would it be to scare up a hunt to-morrow, and get a lot of these chaps to help? I’d like to see how they go to work in their own way. That would be worth seeing.”

“Well, it might be managed. What d’you think, Major?”

“A capital idea. But—hang it, we haven’t got our guns.”

“Oh, as to that,” I said, “you could use mine. There’s a shot gun and a rifle, and a rifle and smooth-bore combined. That’ll arm all hands.”

“Well done, Glanton. You’re a jewel of a chap!” cried Falkner, boisterously. “The very thing. But, I say. How about arranging it with them now. No time like the present, eh?”

The idea appealed to me exceedingly, not for its own sake, I fear, but because it would afford an opportunity of detaining my guests—or shall we say one of them—yet longer, perhaps even another night, for it would be hard if I could not manage to prolong the hunt until too late for them to return. Really Falkner Sewin was not without his uses in the world.

“I think it would be simply delightful!” interjected that “one of them.” “We will be able to see some of it too, won’t we, Mr Glanton?”

“Why of course, Miss Sewin. I’ll send the boys up to some convenient spot with lunch and we’ll make a regular picnic of it.”

The idea was received with enthusiasm. Only Mrs Sewin somewhat faintly objected that they had a long way to go to get home afterwards. But this I over-ruled by hoping they would not find my poor accommodation so very trying that the prospect of another night of it—if the worst came to the worst—should prove entirely out of the question.

Just then a group of men detached themselves from the rest, and came over to us, to salute and ask how we liked the performance.

“This is Wabisa, the next biggest chief under Tyingoza,” I said, introducing the foremost, a tall, dignified head-ringed man. “Now, Miss Sewin, here is a real chief. Tyingoza could not come to-night, but will to-morrow morning.”

“I’m so glad,” she answered, looking at Wabisa with interest.

I gave them some roll tobacco which I had ready for them, and told my boys to make them some coffee. The while I arranged for to-morrow’s bush-buck hunt. There was no difficulty about it at all, even as I had expected. I could have as many boys as I wanted.

“They must hunt too, Wabisa,” I said. “The whiteamakosiwant to see if the assegai is a better weapon than the gun.”

“Ou! That they shall see,” laughed the chief.

“Is there going to be any more dancing, Mr Glanton?” said the youngest girl.

“Yes. The best part. They’re going to give us the war dance now,” and I suggested to Wabisa that it was getting late, and the white ladies might be growing tired.

Of all native dances a war dance is the most catching, and this had not long started before even the old Major found himself beating time with his feet, while as for Falkner, it was all I could do to prevent him from rushing in among them to take his part. The chant now rose quickly to a ferocious roar, and as the dancers swayed and crouched, turning half round, then leaping erect, while going through the pantomime of striking an enemy, to the accompaniment of a strident death hiss, the whole scene was vivid and realistic enough to have rendered some people decidedly nervous. Then the thunderous stamping of six hundred feet, the beating of sticks on shields, and the shrilling rattle of assegai hafts—a sound not quite like any other I ever heard, and I’ve heard it often—add to this the rolling of fierce eyeballs, and the waving of tufted shields in the moonlight and you have a picture unrivalled for thrilling and at the same time exhilarating terror. A gasp as of involuntary relief went up from my guests as the thunder and racket ceased with a suddenness of silence that was almost appalling in contrast Miss Sewin was the first to speak.

“It is perfectly magnificent,” she declared. “I for one don’t know how to thank you, Mr Glanton, for giving us such a splendid entertainment.”

I was rarely pleased at this, and mumbled something—probably idiotic.

“I suppose it isn’t much to you,” she went on. “You must have seen it often, and the real thing too.”

“Well yes. I have, and done by more thousands than there are hundreds here. By the way, I’m giving them a little more beef for to-morrow morning so they’ll be in high trim and good humour for our hunt.”

“Oh, I’m afraid you are going to a great deal of trouble on our account,” she said.

“Isn’t it worth it—at least—I mean—er—it isn’t often one can afford anyone a new kind of pleasure in this worn-out world,” I added lamely. But I believe she read my original meaning for I could see a soft look come into the beautiful clear eyes in the moonlight, and there was a half smile curving her lips. We were talking a little apart from the others who had embarked on a voluble discussion of their own. And then it was voted time for bed, and the natives having dispersed, after a sonorously uttered farewell salute, the Major and Falkner and I had a final glass of grog, or so, and adjourned to our quarters in the store.

Chapter Seven.Tyingoza’s Head-Ring.There was no sign of life on the part of my guests, as I rolled out at early dawn and went down to the waterhole in the kloof for a splash. When I returned the Major and his nephew were sitting up on their blankets rubbing their eyes.“Any chance of a tub, Glanton?” said the latter.“There’s a waterhole down in the kloof, if it’s not too cold for you. Take the path that leads by Tom’s hut. You can’t miss it.”“Right, I’ll chance the cold. Got a towel? Ah, thanks.”“That fellow’s a great subject of anxiety to me, Glanton,” said the Major, after Falkner had gone out. “I feel in a sort of way responsible for him. He was in the Service for a few years, then chucked it suddenly, for no other reason than to go tea-planting in Ceylon with some infernal swindler who persuaded him to invest what he’d got, in a partnership, and then skinned him of the whole lot. His father was simply frantic with him.”“I can imagine he would be.”“So can I, after the expense and trouble he had been put to in getting this young fool into the Service at all, then to have him chuck it all up! He wouldn’t do anything more for him; shut the door in his face and told him to go to the devil. He didn’t go to the devil; he came to me.”“I’m sure he chose the right alternative, Major,” I said, when I had recovered from the roar into which this way of putting it had sent me.“Well, you see it’s a grave responsibility, and if he throws up this I don’t know what’ll become of him. He’s got nothing in the world but what he has invested in a little stock on my place, and as for getting him a bunk, why I haven’t influence enough to get him one as boot-black to a club.”“Well, he mustn’t throw it up, that’s all,” I said.“That’s what I tell him. But he’s so restless, swears the life’s slow here. Bad-tempered too, and always kicking up rows with the niggers. Yes, he’s a great anxiety to me.”As to the last I thought as coming from Major Sewin it was a good deal of the pot calling the kettle black. For the rest his revelations as to Falkner’s prospects, or the lack of them, were not unpleasing to me, if only that the uncomfortable thought which had beset me last night could have had no foundation. This was mean but I suppose it was natural, and, as a set off, may be accepted the fact that I would willingly have done the youngster any good turn within my power. I felt flattered too that the old gentleman should discuss with me what was, after all, a family matter.“I can readily imagine it,” I answered. “But he’ll have too much sense, I should think, to do anything so foolish. And then, too, Major, I should think the ladies’ influence would—”“Ah, now, it’s just that which—”But what “that” was I was not fated to know, for I heard my name called in Mrs Sewin’s voice, and had to hurry away, to find out what was wanted. Also, I thought the speaker had checked himself as though about to say too much.“We never slept more comfortably in our lives than in that waggon of yours, Mr Glanton,” said the youngest girl, as we all met for an early breakfast. “Did we, Aïda?”“No, indeed. The kartel—isn’t that what you call it—has all the elasticity of a spring mattress. Really, I shall never believe again in you up-country men’s stories of roughing it.”“They’re true, all the same,” I answered, with a laugh. “For that reason we make ourselves comfortable when we can.”“By Jove, Glanton, that waterhole of yours is dashed cold,” said Falkner, who came up, looking a fresh and healthy specimen of young England after his bath.“Yes, but go and get dressed, Falkner,” said his aunt. “We’re just going to breakfast.”The table was laid as before, under the waggon sail, upon which the not long risen sun was fast drying up the heavy dew. Away below, over the Zulu country, a thick white mist, in billowy masses of cloud, was rolling back, revealing distant rock and dark forest belt shimmering in sheeny patches of dew beneath the unbroken blue. All were in high spirits, especially Falkner, who had soon joined us, over the prospect of the coming hunt. With his faults, such as they were, he had the redeeming virtue in my eyes of being a keen sportsman.We had done breakfast, and I was pointing out to Miss Sewin various points of interest in the landscape near and far, when we descried a tall figure coming towards us.“Who is this?” she said, as the newcomer saluted. He was a fine, straight, warrior-like young fellow, and carried a small shield and a bundle of hunting assegais which he deposited on the ground.“Ivuzamanzi, the son of Tyingoza—Ah, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed Miss Sewin,” after a few words with him. “The chief sends word that he will not be able to come this morning, but his son will direct the hunting party instead. He will come up this evening if he can.”“Well, I suppose I ought to be more anxious than ever to see him,” she said, “as he is so unapproachable.”“Well, don’t prepare for any display of royalty,” I warned. “Tyingoza is just like any other highbred Zulu, in fact you wouldn’t know him from another unless you were told.”Soon groups of natives began to straggle up, not in regular formation this time. They had discarded their adornments and carried only small shields, knobsticks and light, casting assegais. At their heels trotted a number of dogs, from the slinking mongrel, to the well-bred tawny or brindled greyhound; and indeed the snarling and fighting that presently arose among these, soon took up enough of their owners’ time to keep them apart. The process was simple by the way. If two or more dogs got fighting their owners simply whacked them with kerries until they desisted.“Ah—ah, Ivuzamanzi,” I went on, chaffing him. “I had thought of fixing our mid-day resting place on the river bank below where Umzinyati flows in. Or, are the horns of Matyana’s calves long enough to reach across? What thinkest thou, son of Tyingoza?”“Ou!” laughed the youth, bringing his hand to his mouth. “You are my father, Iqalaqala. But that day is yet to be paid for.”His broken leg was very completely mended, and he showed no trace of a limp, even. I explained the joke to my companion.“I didn’t know they fought like that among themselves,” she said. “Tell me, Mr Glanton. They are not likely to do anything of that sort to-day, are they? I mean, they might get excited.”“No—no. Don’t be in the least alarmed about that. By the way, how are you getting on in your studies? Say something to Ivuzamanzi now—even if only two or three words.”“No, I’m shy to. You’ll only laugh at me, or he will.”“Not a bit of it. Now—go ahead.”“Hallo! What nigger’s this?” bellowed Falkner, swaggering up. “He wasn’t here last night, was he?”“No,” I answered rather shortly, disgusted at the interruption of this blundering ass upon our little understanding. “He’s the chief’s son, and he’s going to boss up the arrangements, so don’t be uncivil to him if you can help it, eh?”“I’ll try not. But I say, Glanton, come and arrange about these guns you were speaking of, there’s a good fellow. It must be nearly time to start.”Already, you see, he was beginning to take over the whole scheme. It was a little way he had—I have observed it too, in others of his kidney.“Oh, there’s time enough,” I said, still shortly, for I don’t like to be hustled, and just then, and by Falkner Sewin, I liked it still less. And something of this must have imparted itself to his understanding for he answered unpleasantly:“Oh well of course, if you’re so much better employed,” and he moved off in dudgeon. My companion coloured slightly and looked displeased.“Isn’t your relative rather a queer tempered sort of fellow?” I asked, with a smile.“Well yes, he is rather, but we are all so sorry for him that—I’m afraid he was rather rude to you, Mr Glanton, I must apologise for him.”“No—no—no,” I said. “Not a bit of it. Don’t you think anything about that. I don’t.”She changed the subject to something else, and I went on talking longer than I would otherwise have done. The interruption and its manner had annoyed me, and a good deal as a protest against being hurried I made up my mind not to hurry. Afterwards I had reason to regret my delay.We strolled back to join the others, and the prospect of this companionship more or less throughout the day, to end in an evening similar to that of last night—with the native revels left out—soon restored my accustomed good humour. The natives were squatting about round the store in groups, conversing in their deep-toned voices. Then suddenly they all sprang to their feet as one man, uttering respectful salutations; and there, to my surprise, advancing leisurely towards us, came Tyingoza himself.“It is the chief,” I explained for the benefit of my companion, “Tyingoza. He has changed his mind.”“Oh, I am so glad,” she said, looking at him with interest. “I shall see him before we start I like the look of him. Why if we had started when Falkner wanted us to we should have missed him.”Afterwards, I repeat, I had good reason to wish we had.I have omitted to describe Tyingoza’s outward appearance. He was a man of between fifty and sixty, rather inclining to stoutness, which detracted somewhat from his stature, but his walk was straight and dignified, and he carried his shaven head, crowned by the shiny ring, well held back, as became a Zulu of birth and standing. His strong face, terminating in a short, crisp, grizzled beard, was a very pleasant one, and the expression of his eyes good-humoured and genial to a degree.“Welcome, Tyingoza,” I said, going forward to meet him. “Here are they who would see thy young men hunt.”The chief ran his eyes over the group.“I see them, Iqalaqala,” he said, in the native idiom. “Whau! the game is rather scarce, but I hope they will be pleased.”His eyes rested for a moment on Miss Sewin, and then on me, and I remembered his joke about the new hut. Then he sat down in his accustomed place against the front of the store, while the others sank back into their former attitudes at a respectful distance.“What rum things those head-rings are, Glanton,” commented Falkner, who had been staring at Tyingoza as if he were some wild animal. “Looks for all the world like a thick stick of Spanish liquorice coiled round his head. What the deuce are they made of?”“The dark gum of the mimosa, and other things,” I said, going on, in the Major’s interest, to translate all sorts of complimentary things which that fine old soldier had never dreamed of originating.“Well, now we’ve seen him,” grumbled Falkner, “can’t you give him a gentle hint to move on, or, at any rate, that we want to. It’s high time we started, and he’s delaying us like blazes.”“Can’t do anything of the sort,” I flung back in a quick aside. “It wouldn’t be etiquette to hurry him.”“Etiquette! With a nigger!” jeered Falkner, going into the store to light his pipe.Now the place of Tyingoza’s accustomed seat was right under a window, which was open. Seated as he was, with his back to the wall, his head came about a foot and a half below the sill of this. I talked with him a little longer and he was just expressing the opinion that it was high time for us to start, when I saw the head and shoulders of Falkner Sewin lounging through this window. He was puffing away at his pipe, looking somewhat intently down upon the chief’s head, and then, to my horror, and of course before I could prevent it, down went his hand. With an agility surprising in a man of his years and build Tyingoza sprang to his feet, and stood with head erect, gazing sternly and indignantly at Falkner, who, still half through the window, was examining minutely a piece which he had dug out of the chief’s head-ring, and still held in his thumb nail, grinning like the stark, record idiot he was.There was a second or two of tension, then the four score or so of natives who were squatting around, sprang to their feet as one man, and a deep gasp of horror and resentment escaped from every chest.“Why what’s the row?” cried the offending fool. “The old boy seems a bit cross.”“A bit cross,” I repeated grimly. “Why you’ve insulted him about as completely as if you’d hit him in the face.”“Oh bosh! Here, I haven’t hurt his old bit of stick liquorice. Tell him to stick his head down and I’ll plaster the bit back in its place again, and give him a shilling into the bargain.”The expression of Tyingoza’s face had undergone a complete change, and the indignant look had given way to one of the most withering contempt, as with a wave of the hand towards Falkner, in which there was a suggestion of pity, he said softly:“Hau! Sengaloku igcwane.” (“It seems an idiot.”) Then, turning, he walked away.

There was no sign of life on the part of my guests, as I rolled out at early dawn and went down to the waterhole in the kloof for a splash. When I returned the Major and his nephew were sitting up on their blankets rubbing their eyes.

“Any chance of a tub, Glanton?” said the latter.

“There’s a waterhole down in the kloof, if it’s not too cold for you. Take the path that leads by Tom’s hut. You can’t miss it.”

“Right, I’ll chance the cold. Got a towel? Ah, thanks.”

“That fellow’s a great subject of anxiety to me, Glanton,” said the Major, after Falkner had gone out. “I feel in a sort of way responsible for him. He was in the Service for a few years, then chucked it suddenly, for no other reason than to go tea-planting in Ceylon with some infernal swindler who persuaded him to invest what he’d got, in a partnership, and then skinned him of the whole lot. His father was simply frantic with him.”

“I can imagine he would be.”

“So can I, after the expense and trouble he had been put to in getting this young fool into the Service at all, then to have him chuck it all up! He wouldn’t do anything more for him; shut the door in his face and told him to go to the devil. He didn’t go to the devil; he came to me.”

“I’m sure he chose the right alternative, Major,” I said, when I had recovered from the roar into which this way of putting it had sent me.

“Well, you see it’s a grave responsibility, and if he throws up this I don’t know what’ll become of him. He’s got nothing in the world but what he has invested in a little stock on my place, and as for getting him a bunk, why I haven’t influence enough to get him one as boot-black to a club.”

“Well, he mustn’t throw it up, that’s all,” I said.

“That’s what I tell him. But he’s so restless, swears the life’s slow here. Bad-tempered too, and always kicking up rows with the niggers. Yes, he’s a great anxiety to me.”

As to the last I thought as coming from Major Sewin it was a good deal of the pot calling the kettle black. For the rest his revelations as to Falkner’s prospects, or the lack of them, were not unpleasing to me, if only that the uncomfortable thought which had beset me last night could have had no foundation. This was mean but I suppose it was natural, and, as a set off, may be accepted the fact that I would willingly have done the youngster any good turn within my power. I felt flattered too that the old gentleman should discuss with me what was, after all, a family matter.

“I can readily imagine it,” I answered. “But he’ll have too much sense, I should think, to do anything so foolish. And then, too, Major, I should think the ladies’ influence would—”

“Ah, now, it’s just that which—”

But what “that” was I was not fated to know, for I heard my name called in Mrs Sewin’s voice, and had to hurry away, to find out what was wanted. Also, I thought the speaker had checked himself as though about to say too much.

“We never slept more comfortably in our lives than in that waggon of yours, Mr Glanton,” said the youngest girl, as we all met for an early breakfast. “Did we, Aïda?”

“No, indeed. The kartel—isn’t that what you call it—has all the elasticity of a spring mattress. Really, I shall never believe again in you up-country men’s stories of roughing it.”

“They’re true, all the same,” I answered, with a laugh. “For that reason we make ourselves comfortable when we can.”

“By Jove, Glanton, that waterhole of yours is dashed cold,” said Falkner, who came up, looking a fresh and healthy specimen of young England after his bath.

“Yes, but go and get dressed, Falkner,” said his aunt. “We’re just going to breakfast.”

The table was laid as before, under the waggon sail, upon which the not long risen sun was fast drying up the heavy dew. Away below, over the Zulu country, a thick white mist, in billowy masses of cloud, was rolling back, revealing distant rock and dark forest belt shimmering in sheeny patches of dew beneath the unbroken blue. All were in high spirits, especially Falkner, who had soon joined us, over the prospect of the coming hunt. With his faults, such as they were, he had the redeeming virtue in my eyes of being a keen sportsman.

We had done breakfast, and I was pointing out to Miss Sewin various points of interest in the landscape near and far, when we descried a tall figure coming towards us.

“Who is this?” she said, as the newcomer saluted. He was a fine, straight, warrior-like young fellow, and carried a small shield and a bundle of hunting assegais which he deposited on the ground.

“Ivuzamanzi, the son of Tyingoza—Ah, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed Miss Sewin,” after a few words with him. “The chief sends word that he will not be able to come this morning, but his son will direct the hunting party instead. He will come up this evening if he can.”

“Well, I suppose I ought to be more anxious than ever to see him,” she said, “as he is so unapproachable.”

“Well, don’t prepare for any display of royalty,” I warned. “Tyingoza is just like any other highbred Zulu, in fact you wouldn’t know him from another unless you were told.”

Soon groups of natives began to straggle up, not in regular formation this time. They had discarded their adornments and carried only small shields, knobsticks and light, casting assegais. At their heels trotted a number of dogs, from the slinking mongrel, to the well-bred tawny or brindled greyhound; and indeed the snarling and fighting that presently arose among these, soon took up enough of their owners’ time to keep them apart. The process was simple by the way. If two or more dogs got fighting their owners simply whacked them with kerries until they desisted.

“Ah—ah, Ivuzamanzi,” I went on, chaffing him. “I had thought of fixing our mid-day resting place on the river bank below where Umzinyati flows in. Or, are the horns of Matyana’s calves long enough to reach across? What thinkest thou, son of Tyingoza?”

“Ou!” laughed the youth, bringing his hand to his mouth. “You are my father, Iqalaqala. But that day is yet to be paid for.”

His broken leg was very completely mended, and he showed no trace of a limp, even. I explained the joke to my companion.

“I didn’t know they fought like that among themselves,” she said. “Tell me, Mr Glanton. They are not likely to do anything of that sort to-day, are they? I mean, they might get excited.”

“No—no. Don’t be in the least alarmed about that. By the way, how are you getting on in your studies? Say something to Ivuzamanzi now—even if only two or three words.”

“No, I’m shy to. You’ll only laugh at me, or he will.”

“Not a bit of it. Now—go ahead.”

“Hallo! What nigger’s this?” bellowed Falkner, swaggering up. “He wasn’t here last night, was he?”

“No,” I answered rather shortly, disgusted at the interruption of this blundering ass upon our little understanding. “He’s the chief’s son, and he’s going to boss up the arrangements, so don’t be uncivil to him if you can help it, eh?”

“I’ll try not. But I say, Glanton, come and arrange about these guns you were speaking of, there’s a good fellow. It must be nearly time to start.”

Already, you see, he was beginning to take over the whole scheme. It was a little way he had—I have observed it too, in others of his kidney.

“Oh, there’s time enough,” I said, still shortly, for I don’t like to be hustled, and just then, and by Falkner Sewin, I liked it still less. And something of this must have imparted itself to his understanding for he answered unpleasantly:

“Oh well of course, if you’re so much better employed,” and he moved off in dudgeon. My companion coloured slightly and looked displeased.

“Isn’t your relative rather a queer tempered sort of fellow?” I asked, with a smile.

“Well yes, he is rather, but we are all so sorry for him that—I’m afraid he was rather rude to you, Mr Glanton, I must apologise for him.”

“No—no—no,” I said. “Not a bit of it. Don’t you think anything about that. I don’t.”

She changed the subject to something else, and I went on talking longer than I would otherwise have done. The interruption and its manner had annoyed me, and a good deal as a protest against being hurried I made up my mind not to hurry. Afterwards I had reason to regret my delay.

We strolled back to join the others, and the prospect of this companionship more or less throughout the day, to end in an evening similar to that of last night—with the native revels left out—soon restored my accustomed good humour. The natives were squatting about round the store in groups, conversing in their deep-toned voices. Then suddenly they all sprang to their feet as one man, uttering respectful salutations; and there, to my surprise, advancing leisurely towards us, came Tyingoza himself.

“It is the chief,” I explained for the benefit of my companion, “Tyingoza. He has changed his mind.”

“Oh, I am so glad,” she said, looking at him with interest. “I shall see him before we start I like the look of him. Why if we had started when Falkner wanted us to we should have missed him.”

Afterwards, I repeat, I had good reason to wish we had.

I have omitted to describe Tyingoza’s outward appearance. He was a man of between fifty and sixty, rather inclining to stoutness, which detracted somewhat from his stature, but his walk was straight and dignified, and he carried his shaven head, crowned by the shiny ring, well held back, as became a Zulu of birth and standing. His strong face, terminating in a short, crisp, grizzled beard, was a very pleasant one, and the expression of his eyes good-humoured and genial to a degree.

“Welcome, Tyingoza,” I said, going forward to meet him. “Here are they who would see thy young men hunt.”

The chief ran his eyes over the group.

“I see them, Iqalaqala,” he said, in the native idiom. “Whau! the game is rather scarce, but I hope they will be pleased.”

His eyes rested for a moment on Miss Sewin, and then on me, and I remembered his joke about the new hut. Then he sat down in his accustomed place against the front of the store, while the others sank back into their former attitudes at a respectful distance.

“What rum things those head-rings are, Glanton,” commented Falkner, who had been staring at Tyingoza as if he were some wild animal. “Looks for all the world like a thick stick of Spanish liquorice coiled round his head. What the deuce are they made of?”

“The dark gum of the mimosa, and other things,” I said, going on, in the Major’s interest, to translate all sorts of complimentary things which that fine old soldier had never dreamed of originating.

“Well, now we’ve seen him,” grumbled Falkner, “can’t you give him a gentle hint to move on, or, at any rate, that we want to. It’s high time we started, and he’s delaying us like blazes.”

“Can’t do anything of the sort,” I flung back in a quick aside. “It wouldn’t be etiquette to hurry him.”

“Etiquette! With a nigger!” jeered Falkner, going into the store to light his pipe.

Now the place of Tyingoza’s accustomed seat was right under a window, which was open. Seated as he was, with his back to the wall, his head came about a foot and a half below the sill of this. I talked with him a little longer and he was just expressing the opinion that it was high time for us to start, when I saw the head and shoulders of Falkner Sewin lounging through this window. He was puffing away at his pipe, looking somewhat intently down upon the chief’s head, and then, to my horror, and of course before I could prevent it, down went his hand. With an agility surprising in a man of his years and build Tyingoza sprang to his feet, and stood with head erect, gazing sternly and indignantly at Falkner, who, still half through the window, was examining minutely a piece which he had dug out of the chief’s head-ring, and still held in his thumb nail, grinning like the stark, record idiot he was.

There was a second or two of tension, then the four score or so of natives who were squatting around, sprang to their feet as one man, and a deep gasp of horror and resentment escaped from every chest.

“Why what’s the row?” cried the offending fool. “The old boy seems a bit cross.”

“A bit cross,” I repeated grimly. “Why you’ve insulted him about as completely as if you’d hit him in the face.”

“Oh bosh! Here, I haven’t hurt his old bit of stick liquorice. Tell him to stick his head down and I’ll plaster the bit back in its place again, and give him a shilling into the bargain.”

The expression of Tyingoza’s face had undergone a complete change, and the indignant look had given way to one of the most withering contempt, as with a wave of the hand towards Falkner, in which there was a suggestion of pity, he said softly:

“Hau! Sengaloku igcwane.” (“It seems an idiot.”) Then, turning, he walked away.

Chapter Eight.The Spoiling of the Hunt.There was a tense, and, under the circumstances to anyone who knew, rather an awesome silence.“This won’t do,” I said. “I must go after him and explain.”“Don’t go. It doesn’t look safe.”The protest came from Miss Sewin, for now an angry muttering had arisen among the young men, and the rattle of assegai hafts—this time in ominous earnest—mingled with the hoarse growl of deepening indignation. A very different face was upon things now to that of formerly. The head-ring of their father and chief had been insulted.“It might not be for everybody, but it is for me,” I answered, quickly, as I hurried after the chief.It was no easy task to placate Tyingoza. I pointed out to him that what had been done was the silly childish act of a foolish boy who had no sort of idea of what he was doing, and how sorry I was that such a thing should have happened, especially on my place, where he, Tyingoza, had always been so thoroughly welcome, and so forth. And now, would not he return with me and receive a present from me, and an apology from the boy, to show his people that there was no remnant of a cloud between us?But it was all of no use. He relaxed as far as I was concerned. It was a pity that I had been obliged to have an idiot on my place, he said, but he could see that what had happened was no fault of mine. But he would not come back.“There are my ‘dogs,’ Iqalaqala,” pointing to the groups of young men, now some distance behind us. “I sent them to hunt with your friends—they will do so. I am going home.”I could not shake his determination, and he strode away. Our talk, as I said, had taken up some little time, and now as I neared the store I saw that I had returned none too soon.For, seeing that their chief had not returned the angry mutterings of his incensed followers had risen to a threatening hubbub. All the savage was now aroused within them, and they crowded up to the store, clamouring for the man who had insulted their father’s head-ring. Assegais were flourished, dogs were adding their howls and yaps to the general racket, and altogether matters were taking a decidedly serious turn.“What is this, children of Tyingoza?” I said, as I came up behind them—incidentally kicking away a large cur which had come for me open-mouthed. “The last words of the chief as he left me were—‘I have sent them to hunt with your friends—they will do so.’ But now I find you ready to spring upon them instead. What does it mean?”“This, Iqalaqala. We want the ‘idiot’.”The speaker was Ivuzamanzi. He had been out of the way during the incident, which was uncommonly lucky for Falkner Sewin. Now he was foremost in the agitation.“But you cannot hold an ‘idiot’ responsible,” I urged, catching at a straw.“Ah—ah! But this is not a real one,” answered the young warrior. “He must be beaten.”“Not so. The chief is satisfied. He bade me tell you to go on with the hunt. Who are ye to shut your ears to his ‘word’?”This told, for the clamour dropped into sullen mutterings as they consulted together. The while I walked through them and gained the store.The Major was standing in the doorway, and I could see the faces of the two girls at the window light up with relief as I approached. They had thought I should be murdered in the midst of the excited and gesticulating group, but as a matter of fact I ran not the slightest danger, and this I hastened to assure them. I was glad to notice that Falkner had had the sense to keep himself out of sight, or, what was more likely, somebody else had had it for him.“Ah, now we shall be all right,” said Mrs Sewin, who was seated on a pile of goods for want of a chair. “I must say these savages are rather alarming.”“They’ll go home directly, Mrs Sewin. I’ve talked them into a better frame of mind.”“Go home?” echoed Falkner. “But, confound it all—what about our hunt?”“You won’t get one of them to stir in that now,” I said, “and if they did you wouldn’t be well advised to go with them.”“Well, I think there’s considerable overweight of fuss being made because a silly old nigger puts his back up and walks off in a huff,” answered Falkner, sullenly.“Look here, Sewin,” I said, fast beginning to lose my temper. “That ‘silly old nigger’ is one of the most influential chiefs in Natal. Added to which he’s a Zulu of high breeding, that is to say one of the proudest of men—and you’ve put upon him the biggest insult you could have thought out, and that in the presence of a number of his people—who moreover were sent up here by his orders to help your day’s amusement I say nothing of it having been done on my place—but, incidentally, your monkeyish and schoolboy prank has been the means of frightening the ladies somewhat.”“Here, I say, Glanton. I don’t take that sort of talk, you know,” he answered, colouring up.“Glanton’s quite right,” struck in the Major decisively, and with some sternness. “You’ve made an ass of yourself, and got us into a nice mess—which we don’t seem out of yet,” he added, as again the voices outside rose high.I went out again. Ivuzamanzi came forward.“We will not hunt with your friends, Iqalaqala. We are going home. As for theigcwane—let him look well on all sides of him.”“For the first I think you are right son of Tyingoza,” I answered. “For the second—gahle! It is not wise to threaten men on the Queen’s side of the river—for such might lead to visits from theAmapolise.”But he replied that he cared nothing for the police, and the others laughed sneeringly and agreed.“See now,” said Ivuzamanzi, shaking his stick. “Will he, theigcwane, come out and fight? He looks big enough, and strong enough, for all that he is a fool.”I found myself wishing the matter might be cleared up in this rough and ready manner; but for one thing the ladies were with us, for another I didn’t see how the two could fight on anything like even terms. Falkner couldn’t fight with native weapons, and Ivuzamanzi, like any other Zulu, of course had not the remotest idea how to use his fists. So it wouldn’t do.“How can that be?” I put it. “He does not understand fighting in your way, and you do not understand fighting in his. You would both be ridiculous. Go home, son of Tyingoza, and talk with your father. You will find he has forgotten all about the affair and so must you. A mistake has been made and we all regret it.”“Ou!” he grunted, and turned away. I thought enough had been said, to these young ones at any rate, so forbore to give them anything more in the way of entertainment lest they should think we were afraid of them. And soon, somewhat to my relief, and very much to the relief of my guests, they picked up their weapons, and with their curs at their heels moved away in groups as they had come.“Well, we seem to have put you to no end of bother, Glanton, for which I can’t tell you how sorry we are,” said the Major. “And now we mustn’t put you to any more—so, as there is to be no hunt I propose that we saddle up, and go home.”“Not until after lunch at any rate, Major,” I said. “I can’t allow that for a moment. As for bother it has been nothing but a pleasure to me, except this last tiresome business.”I thought Miss Sewin’s face expressed unmistakable approval as I caught her glance.“How well you seem to manage these people, Mr Glanton,” she said. “I—we—were beginning to feel rather nervous until you came up. Then we were sure it would all come right. And it has.”Inwardly I thought it had done anything but that, but under the circumstances my confounded conceit was considerably tickled by her approval, and I felt disposed to purr. However I answered that talking over natives was an everyday affair with me, in fact part of my trade, and by the time we sat down to lunch—which was not long, for the morning was well on by then—good humour seemed generally restored. Even Falkner had got over his sulks.“I say, Sewin,” I said to him as I passed him the bottle. “You were talking about going on a trading trip with me. It wouldn’t do to get chipping bits out of the chiefs’ head-rings on the other side of the river, you know. They take that sort of thing much more seriously over there.”“Oh hang it, Glanton, let a fellow alone, can’t you,” he answered, grinning rather foolishly.“By the way, Major, has anything more been heard about Hensley?” I said.“Hensley? Who’s he? Ah, I remember. He’s been over at our place a couple of times. Why? Is he ill?”“Nobody knows—or where he is. He has disappeared.”“Disappeared?”“Yes. Nobody seems to have the slightest clue as to what has become of him. He went to bed as usual, and in the morning—well, he wasn’t there. He couldn’t have gone away anywhere, for his horses were all on the place, and his boys say they had never heard him express any intention of leaving home.”“Good gracious, no. We hadn’t heard of it,” said Mrs Sewin. “But—when was it?”“About a fortnight ago. I didn’t hear of it till the other day—and then through native sources.”“Oh, some nigger yarn I suppose,” said Falkner in his superior manner, which always ruffled me.“Would you be surprised to hear that I obtain a good deal of astonishingly accurate information through the same source, Sewin?” I answered. “In fact there is more than one person to whom it relates, who would be more than a little uncomfortable did they guess how much I knew about them.”“Oh, then you run a nigger gossip shop as well as a nigger trading shop,” he retorted, nastily.“But what a very unpleasant thing,” hastily struck in his aunt, anxious to cover his rudeness. “Does that sort of thing happen here often?”“I never heard of a case before.”“Probably the niggers murdered him and stowed him away somewhere,” pronounced the irrepressible Falkner.“Even ‘niggers’ don’t do that sort of thing without a motive, and here there was none. Less by a long way than had it been your case,” I was tempted to add, but didn’t. “No, I own it puzzles me. I shall take a ride over there in a day or two, and make a few enquiries on the spot, just as a matter of curiosity.”“All the same it looks dashed fishy,” said the Major. “D’you know, Glanton, I’m inclined to think Falkner may have hit it.”“Nothing’s absolutely impossible,” I answered. “Still, I don’t think that’s the solution.”“But the police—what do they think of it?”“So far they are stumped utterly and completely—nor can their native detectives rout out anything.”“How very dreadful,” said Mrs Sewin. “Really it makes one feel quite uncomfortable.”“He lived alone, remember, Mrs Sewin, and there are plenty of you,” I laughed, meaning to be reassuring. But I could see that a decidedly uncomfortable feeling had taken hold upon her mind, and tried to turn the conversation, blaming myself for a fool in having started such a subject at all on the top of the alarm the ladies had already been subjected to that morning. But they say there are compensations for everything, and mine came when just as they were preparing to start Mrs Sewin said to me:“I have a very great favour to ask you, Mr Glanton, and I hardly like doing so after all your kindness to us since yesterday and what has come of it. But—would you mind riding home with us this afternoon. After what has just happened we should feel so much safer if you would.”I tried to put all the sincerity I could into my reassurances that no one would interfere with them, but apart from my own inclinations a certain anxious look on Aïda Sewin’s face as they waited for my answer decided me.“Why of course I will if it will be any help to you, Mrs Sewin,” I said, and then again a quick grateful look from the same quarter caused me to tread on air, as I went round to see to the saddling up of the horses—my own among them.As we took our way down the well worn bush path I could see that the incident of the morning had not been entirely cleared off from the minds of the party. The ladies were inclined to be nervous, and if a horse started and shied at a tortoise or a white snail shell beside the path I believe they more than half expected a crowd of revengeful savages to rush out and massacre them on the spot. However, of course, nothing happened, and we got to the Major’s farm by sundown.Then I had my reward.“Will you come and help me water some of the flowers, Mr Glanton?” said Miss Sewin, after we had offsaddled and generally settled ourselves. “No—don’t say you are going back. Mother is very nervous to-night, and I know you are going to add to your kindness to us by sleeping here.”Again I trod on air—and yet—and yet—I felt that I was acting like a fool. What on earth could come of it—at any rate to my advantage? Yet, again—why not?“I want you to promise me something, Mr Glanton, will you?” Miss Sewin said, when dusk and the lateness of the hour had put an end to what was to me one of the most delightful half hours I ever remember spending, for we had spent it alone, she chatting in that free and natural manner of hers, I agreeing with everything, as the entrancement of listening to her voice and watching her grace of movement wound itself more and more around me.“I think I may safely promise you anything, Miss Sewin,” I answered. “Well? What is it?”“I want you to promise me not to quarrel with my cousin—no matter how rude and provoking he may be.”“Is that all? Why of course I will.”“Ah but—you may not find it so easy,” she went on, speaking earnestly, and her wide open glance full on my face. “I have been noticing his behaviour towards you of late, and admiring your forbearance. But as a personal favour to myself, don’t quarrel with him.”“Oh, I still think that’ll be an easy promise to keep,” I said; and yet, the very fact that she was so anxious on the subject seemed to make the other way. Why was she?She shook her head slightly and smiled, as though reading my thoughts.“You see, we are all so friendly together, are we not?” she said. “And a man of your experience and good sense can afford to put up with a good deal from a mere boy who hasn’t much of either.”“Why of course,” I answered easily, and reassured by her tactful explanation. Yet—was Falkner such “a mere boy” after all?

There was a tense, and, under the circumstances to anyone who knew, rather an awesome silence.

“This won’t do,” I said. “I must go after him and explain.”

“Don’t go. It doesn’t look safe.”

The protest came from Miss Sewin, for now an angry muttering had arisen among the young men, and the rattle of assegai hafts—this time in ominous earnest—mingled with the hoarse growl of deepening indignation. A very different face was upon things now to that of formerly. The head-ring of their father and chief had been insulted.

“It might not be for everybody, but it is for me,” I answered, quickly, as I hurried after the chief.

It was no easy task to placate Tyingoza. I pointed out to him that what had been done was the silly childish act of a foolish boy who had no sort of idea of what he was doing, and how sorry I was that such a thing should have happened, especially on my place, where he, Tyingoza, had always been so thoroughly welcome, and so forth. And now, would not he return with me and receive a present from me, and an apology from the boy, to show his people that there was no remnant of a cloud between us?

But it was all of no use. He relaxed as far as I was concerned. It was a pity that I had been obliged to have an idiot on my place, he said, but he could see that what had happened was no fault of mine. But he would not come back.

“There are my ‘dogs,’ Iqalaqala,” pointing to the groups of young men, now some distance behind us. “I sent them to hunt with your friends—they will do so. I am going home.”

I could not shake his determination, and he strode away. Our talk, as I said, had taken up some little time, and now as I neared the store I saw that I had returned none too soon.

For, seeing that their chief had not returned the angry mutterings of his incensed followers had risen to a threatening hubbub. All the savage was now aroused within them, and they crowded up to the store, clamouring for the man who had insulted their father’s head-ring. Assegais were flourished, dogs were adding their howls and yaps to the general racket, and altogether matters were taking a decidedly serious turn.

“What is this, children of Tyingoza?” I said, as I came up behind them—incidentally kicking away a large cur which had come for me open-mouthed. “The last words of the chief as he left me were—‘I have sent them to hunt with your friends—they will do so.’ But now I find you ready to spring upon them instead. What does it mean?”

“This, Iqalaqala. We want the ‘idiot’.”

The speaker was Ivuzamanzi. He had been out of the way during the incident, which was uncommonly lucky for Falkner Sewin. Now he was foremost in the agitation.

“But you cannot hold an ‘idiot’ responsible,” I urged, catching at a straw.

“Ah—ah! But this is not a real one,” answered the young warrior. “He must be beaten.”

“Not so. The chief is satisfied. He bade me tell you to go on with the hunt. Who are ye to shut your ears to his ‘word’?”

This told, for the clamour dropped into sullen mutterings as they consulted together. The while I walked through them and gained the store.

The Major was standing in the doorway, and I could see the faces of the two girls at the window light up with relief as I approached. They had thought I should be murdered in the midst of the excited and gesticulating group, but as a matter of fact I ran not the slightest danger, and this I hastened to assure them. I was glad to notice that Falkner had had the sense to keep himself out of sight, or, what was more likely, somebody else had had it for him.

“Ah, now we shall be all right,” said Mrs Sewin, who was seated on a pile of goods for want of a chair. “I must say these savages are rather alarming.”

“They’ll go home directly, Mrs Sewin. I’ve talked them into a better frame of mind.”

“Go home?” echoed Falkner. “But, confound it all—what about our hunt?”

“You won’t get one of them to stir in that now,” I said, “and if they did you wouldn’t be well advised to go with them.”

“Well, I think there’s considerable overweight of fuss being made because a silly old nigger puts his back up and walks off in a huff,” answered Falkner, sullenly.

“Look here, Sewin,” I said, fast beginning to lose my temper. “That ‘silly old nigger’ is one of the most influential chiefs in Natal. Added to which he’s a Zulu of high breeding, that is to say one of the proudest of men—and you’ve put upon him the biggest insult you could have thought out, and that in the presence of a number of his people—who moreover were sent up here by his orders to help your day’s amusement I say nothing of it having been done on my place—but, incidentally, your monkeyish and schoolboy prank has been the means of frightening the ladies somewhat.”

“Here, I say, Glanton. I don’t take that sort of talk, you know,” he answered, colouring up.

“Glanton’s quite right,” struck in the Major decisively, and with some sternness. “You’ve made an ass of yourself, and got us into a nice mess—which we don’t seem out of yet,” he added, as again the voices outside rose high.

I went out again. Ivuzamanzi came forward.

“We will not hunt with your friends, Iqalaqala. We are going home. As for theigcwane—let him look well on all sides of him.”

“For the first I think you are right son of Tyingoza,” I answered. “For the second—gahle! It is not wise to threaten men on the Queen’s side of the river—for such might lead to visits from theAmapolise.”

But he replied that he cared nothing for the police, and the others laughed sneeringly and agreed.

“See now,” said Ivuzamanzi, shaking his stick. “Will he, theigcwane, come out and fight? He looks big enough, and strong enough, for all that he is a fool.”

I found myself wishing the matter might be cleared up in this rough and ready manner; but for one thing the ladies were with us, for another I didn’t see how the two could fight on anything like even terms. Falkner couldn’t fight with native weapons, and Ivuzamanzi, like any other Zulu, of course had not the remotest idea how to use his fists. So it wouldn’t do.

“How can that be?” I put it. “He does not understand fighting in your way, and you do not understand fighting in his. You would both be ridiculous. Go home, son of Tyingoza, and talk with your father. You will find he has forgotten all about the affair and so must you. A mistake has been made and we all regret it.”

“Ou!” he grunted, and turned away. I thought enough had been said, to these young ones at any rate, so forbore to give them anything more in the way of entertainment lest they should think we were afraid of them. And soon, somewhat to my relief, and very much to the relief of my guests, they picked up their weapons, and with their curs at their heels moved away in groups as they had come.

“Well, we seem to have put you to no end of bother, Glanton, for which I can’t tell you how sorry we are,” said the Major. “And now we mustn’t put you to any more—so, as there is to be no hunt I propose that we saddle up, and go home.”

“Not until after lunch at any rate, Major,” I said. “I can’t allow that for a moment. As for bother it has been nothing but a pleasure to me, except this last tiresome business.”

I thought Miss Sewin’s face expressed unmistakable approval as I caught her glance.

“How well you seem to manage these people, Mr Glanton,” she said. “I—we—were beginning to feel rather nervous until you came up. Then we were sure it would all come right. And it has.”

Inwardly I thought it had done anything but that, but under the circumstances my confounded conceit was considerably tickled by her approval, and I felt disposed to purr. However I answered that talking over natives was an everyday affair with me, in fact part of my trade, and by the time we sat down to lunch—which was not long, for the morning was well on by then—good humour seemed generally restored. Even Falkner had got over his sulks.

“I say, Sewin,” I said to him as I passed him the bottle. “You were talking about going on a trading trip with me. It wouldn’t do to get chipping bits out of the chiefs’ head-rings on the other side of the river, you know. They take that sort of thing much more seriously over there.”

“Oh hang it, Glanton, let a fellow alone, can’t you,” he answered, grinning rather foolishly.

“By the way, Major, has anything more been heard about Hensley?” I said.

“Hensley? Who’s he? Ah, I remember. He’s been over at our place a couple of times. Why? Is he ill?”

“Nobody knows—or where he is. He has disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Yes. Nobody seems to have the slightest clue as to what has become of him. He went to bed as usual, and in the morning—well, he wasn’t there. He couldn’t have gone away anywhere, for his horses were all on the place, and his boys say they had never heard him express any intention of leaving home.”

“Good gracious, no. We hadn’t heard of it,” said Mrs Sewin. “But—when was it?”

“About a fortnight ago. I didn’t hear of it till the other day—and then through native sources.”

“Oh, some nigger yarn I suppose,” said Falkner in his superior manner, which always ruffled me.

“Would you be surprised to hear that I obtain a good deal of astonishingly accurate information through the same source, Sewin?” I answered. “In fact there is more than one person to whom it relates, who would be more than a little uncomfortable did they guess how much I knew about them.”

“Oh, then you run a nigger gossip shop as well as a nigger trading shop,” he retorted, nastily.

“But what a very unpleasant thing,” hastily struck in his aunt, anxious to cover his rudeness. “Does that sort of thing happen here often?”

“I never heard of a case before.”

“Probably the niggers murdered him and stowed him away somewhere,” pronounced the irrepressible Falkner.

“Even ‘niggers’ don’t do that sort of thing without a motive, and here there was none. Less by a long way than had it been your case,” I was tempted to add, but didn’t. “No, I own it puzzles me. I shall take a ride over there in a day or two, and make a few enquiries on the spot, just as a matter of curiosity.”

“All the same it looks dashed fishy,” said the Major. “D’you know, Glanton, I’m inclined to think Falkner may have hit it.”

“Nothing’s absolutely impossible,” I answered. “Still, I don’t think that’s the solution.”

“But the police—what do they think of it?”

“So far they are stumped utterly and completely—nor can their native detectives rout out anything.”

“How very dreadful,” said Mrs Sewin. “Really it makes one feel quite uncomfortable.”

“He lived alone, remember, Mrs Sewin, and there are plenty of you,” I laughed, meaning to be reassuring. But I could see that a decidedly uncomfortable feeling had taken hold upon her mind, and tried to turn the conversation, blaming myself for a fool in having started such a subject at all on the top of the alarm the ladies had already been subjected to that morning. But they say there are compensations for everything, and mine came when just as they were preparing to start Mrs Sewin said to me:

“I have a very great favour to ask you, Mr Glanton, and I hardly like doing so after all your kindness to us since yesterday and what has come of it. But—would you mind riding home with us this afternoon. After what has just happened we should feel so much safer if you would.”

I tried to put all the sincerity I could into my reassurances that no one would interfere with them, but apart from my own inclinations a certain anxious look on Aïda Sewin’s face as they waited for my answer decided me.

“Why of course I will if it will be any help to you, Mrs Sewin,” I said, and then again a quick grateful look from the same quarter caused me to tread on air, as I went round to see to the saddling up of the horses—my own among them.

As we took our way down the well worn bush path I could see that the incident of the morning had not been entirely cleared off from the minds of the party. The ladies were inclined to be nervous, and if a horse started and shied at a tortoise or a white snail shell beside the path I believe they more than half expected a crowd of revengeful savages to rush out and massacre them on the spot. However, of course, nothing happened, and we got to the Major’s farm by sundown.

Then I had my reward.

“Will you come and help me water some of the flowers, Mr Glanton?” said Miss Sewin, after we had offsaddled and generally settled ourselves. “No—don’t say you are going back. Mother is very nervous to-night, and I know you are going to add to your kindness to us by sleeping here.”

Again I trod on air—and yet—and yet—I felt that I was acting like a fool. What on earth could come of it—at any rate to my advantage? Yet, again—why not?

“I want you to promise me something, Mr Glanton, will you?” Miss Sewin said, when dusk and the lateness of the hour had put an end to what was to me one of the most delightful half hours I ever remember spending, for we had spent it alone, she chatting in that free and natural manner of hers, I agreeing with everything, as the entrancement of listening to her voice and watching her grace of movement wound itself more and more around me.

“I think I may safely promise you anything, Miss Sewin,” I answered. “Well? What is it?”

“I want you to promise me not to quarrel with my cousin—no matter how rude and provoking he may be.”

“Is that all? Why of course I will.”

“Ah but—you may not find it so easy,” she went on, speaking earnestly, and her wide open glance full on my face. “I have been noticing his behaviour towards you of late, and admiring your forbearance. But as a personal favour to myself, don’t quarrel with him.”

“Oh, I still think that’ll be an easy promise to keep,” I said; and yet, the very fact that she was so anxious on the subject seemed to make the other way. Why was she?

She shook her head slightly and smiled, as though reading my thoughts.

“You see, we are all so friendly together, are we not?” she said. “And a man of your experience and good sense can afford to put up with a good deal from a mere boy who hasn’t much of either.”

“Why of course,” I answered easily, and reassured by her tactful explanation. Yet—was Falkner such “a mere boy” after all?

Chapter Nine.Hensley’s next-of-kin.It is a strange, and I suppose a wholesomely-humiliating thing that we are appointed to go through life learning how little we know ourselves. Here was I, a man no longer young, with considerable experience of the ways of the world, rough and smooth, and under the fixed impression that if there was one man in the said wide and wicked world whom I knew thoroughly, in and out, from the crown of his hat to the soles of his boots—orvelschoenen, as the case might be—that man was Godfrey Glanton, trader in the Zulu. And yet I had lived to learn that I didn’t know him at all.For instance the happy-go-lucky, free-and-easy, semi-lonely life that had satisfied me for so many years seemed no longer satisfying; yet why not, seeing that all its conditions prevailed as before? I had enough for my needs, and if I didn’t make a fortune out of my trade, whether stationary or from time to time peripatetic, I had always made a steady profit. Now, however, it came home to me that this was a state of things hardly the best for a man to live and die in.Again why not? I had seen contemporaries of my own—men circumstanced like myself who had come to the same conclusion. They had left it—only to come to grief in unfamiliar undertakings. Or they had married; only to find that they had better have elected to go through the rest of life with a chain and ball hung round their necks, than strapped to some nagging woman full of affectations and ailments—and raising a brood of progeny far more likely to prove a curse to them than anything else; thanks to the holy and gentle maternal influence aforesaid. All this I had seen, and yet, here I was, feeling restless and unsatisfied because for several days the recollection of a certain sweet and refined face, lit up by a pair of large, appealing eyes, had haunted my solitary hours.It was that time since I had seen my neighbours. I had heard of them through my usual sources of information, and they seemed to me to be getting along all right; wherefore I had forborne to pay another visit lest it might have the appearance of “hanging around.” And by way of combating an inclination to do so now, I made up my mind to carry out a deferred intention, viz., pay a visit to Hensley’s place.Tyingoza had been over to see me a couple of times, but made no allusion whatever to Falkner Sewin’s act of boyish idiocy: presumably rating it at its proper standard. But, I noticed that he wore a new head-ring. However, I hoped that was an incident forgotten; and as I heard nothing to the contrary, and my trade ran on as usual, I made no further reference to it either to Tyingoza or anybody else.I arrived at the scene of Hensley’s disappearance about mid-day. The homestead stood in a long, narrow valley, thickly bushed. Behind, and almost overhanging it, was a great krantz whose smooth ironstone wall glowed like a vast slab of red-hot metal. The place was wild and picturesque to a degree, but—oh so hot!Two men in shirts and trousers were playing quoits as I came up. I didn’t know either of them by sight.“Good day,” said one of them, knocking off his play, and coming up. “Off-saddle won’t you? Dashed hot, isn’t it?”“Thanks. I’m Glanton, from Isipanga,” I said in answer to his look of enquiry.“Oh. Glad to know you, Glanton. I’m Kendrew, from nowhere in particular, at least not just now, price of transport being tooslegfor anything.”“Oh, you ride transport then? How many waggons?”“Three in good times—one in bad; none in worse—as in the present case. This is Sergeant Simcox, of the N.M.P.,” introducing the other man, whom I noticed wore uniform trousers and boots. “He’s been helping me to look for my poor old uncle, you know.”“Oh, Hensley was your uncle, was he?”“Rather. But I’m next-of-kin—so if he’s not found I take. See?” with a comprehensive wink and jerk of the head which took in the surroundings.I couldn’t help laughing at his coolness. He was a tall, rather good-looking young fellow, all wire and whipcord, with a chronically whimsical expression. The police sergeant was a hard bitten looking customer, typical of his line in life.“Now what do you think of the affair?” I said. “Did you know Hensley well?”“Hanged if I did. He didn’t like me. Did you?”“Not very. I used to ride over and look him up now and again. But I can’t imagine him doing anything mysterious. In fact I should say he’d be the last man in the world to do it.”“Ja. I don’t know what to think of it. I’ve been running the place since I heard of the affair—luckily I wasn’t on the road just then so was able to. You’ll stop and have some scoff of course—you too, sergeant?”“Wish I could,” said the latter, “but it’s against rules. Must get back to my camp.”“Hang rules. Who’s to know? Glanton here won’t split.”He was right, wherefore I forbear to say whether Sergeant Simcox made the third at that festive board or not.We talked of trade and transport-riding and frontier matters generally, but surprisingly little of the matter that had brought me there. In fact Kendrew rather seemed to shirk the subject; not in any sort of suspicious manner let me explain, but rather as if he thought the whole thing a bore, and a very great one at that.“You see, Glanton,” he explained, presumably detecting a surprised look on my face, called there by the exceedingly light way in which he was taking things. “You see it isn’t as if we had had a lot to do with each other. Of course I don’t for a moment hope that the poor old boy has come to grief, in fact I can’t help feeling that he may turn up any moment and want to know what the devil I’ve taken up my quarters at his place for, in this free and easy way.”After a good dinner, washed down with a glass or so of grog, we went to look at the place where the missing man had slept. This didn’t help towards any theory. If there had been foul play, whoever had been concerned in it had removed all traces long ago.“A good hound, requisitioned at first, would have done something towards clearing up the mystery,” I said.“Yes, but you might as well have requisitioned a good elephant, for all you’d get either round here,” laughed Kendrew. “Well, I shall just give it up as a bad job and leave it to Simcox. That’s what he draws his pay for. I’ll just sit tight and boss up things so long. That’s my job.”“I’d like to have a word or two with the boy who saw him last,” I said. “Alone I mean.”“Think you can get him to talk, eh? Well perhaps you may—I’ve heard of you, Glanton, and what a chap you are for managing Kafirs. All right, stop on till this evening, the boy’s out herding now. Then you canindabahim to your heart’s content after supper. You’ll stay the night of course.”But I urged that such was not in my programme, and in fact I had some business to attend to next day irrespective of mere retail trade in the store. So we compromised by my consenting to remain till evening. There was sufficient moon for me to ride home by even if it rose somewhat late. I suggested that we should ride out into the veldt in the afternoon and I could interview the boy there. He would talk more freely that way, and Kendrew agreed.The boy was a quiet, decent looking youngster, and was herding his flock in most exemplary fashion. I asked him his name.“Pecamane, ’Nkose!”“Have I seen you before?”“More than once,Nkose. At Isipanga, at the store. Then again, when we danced and ate beef.”“Ah. You were there then? Who is your chief?”“Tyingoza,Nkose.”Kendrew had ridden on, leaving me alone with the boy.“Well then,” I said, “if Tyingoza is your chief you will be safe in tellingmethe story of your master’s ‘who is no longer here.’”“Ou!Nkose. The only story I have to tell is what I told to theAmapolise, and he who now sits here”—meaning Kendrew. “But it is no story.”He was right there, in that like the tale of the empty bottle there was nothing in it. His master had given him some final orders after supper, and he had gone over to the huts for the night. He was employed in the stable then.And no one had opened the stable?No, it was locked, and his master had the key. They had been obliged to break open the door in the morning to get at the horses.There you see, there was nothing in this story, but then I had never expected there would be. What I wanted was to watch the face and note the manner of its narrator. This I had done, and keenly, with the result that I felt convinced that the boy knew no more about Hensley’s disappearance than I did myself. Upon this the police sergeant subsequently waxed somewhat superior. He resented the idea that what had baffled the wit of the police and native detectives combined might stand the slightest chance of being cleared up by me. However I didn’t take offence, although my opinion of the abilities of his force was but medium, and that of the native detectives nowhere, though this applied more to their morality than ingenuity. It happened that I was in a position to know something of the methods of the latter in “getting up” cases.“Well good-bye, Glanton,” said Kendrew, as we shook hands. “Devilish glad you came over in a friendly way. And, I say—mind you repeat the operation and that often. I like a jolly, good sort of neighbourly neighbour.”I promised him I would, as I climbed into the saddle—and the great krantz seemed to echo back our cheery good-bye in ghostly refrain.I liked Kendrew, I decided as I rode along. He struck me as a lively, cheery sort of fellow with lots of fun in him, and not an atom of harm. Decidedly as a neighbour he would be an improvement on his poor old relative, who although a good chap enough had always been a bit of a fossil. That’s one of the advantages of the up-country or frontier life, you take a man as you find him and no make believe, or stiffness or ceremony. If he’s a good fellow he is, and all the better. If he isn’t why then he isn’t, and you needn’t have any more to do with him than you want, or make any pretence about it.In the solitude as I took my way through the thorns the recollection of Hensley came upon me again, and I confess, as I thought upon it there, under the midnight moon—for I had started back rather later than I had intended—a sort of creepy feeling came over me. What the deuce had become of the man? If he had got a fit of mental aberration, and taken himself off, he would have left some spoor, yet no sign of any had been lighted upon by those who had again and again made diligent search. I looked around. The bush sprays seemed to take on all manner of weird shapes; and once my horse, shying and snorting at a big hare, squatting up on its haunches like a big idiot, bang in the middle of the path, gave me quite an unpleasant start. The black brow of the krantz cut the misty, star-speckled skyline now receding on my left behind—and then—my horse gave forth another snort and at the same time shied so violently as to have unseated me, but that my nerves were—again I confess it—at something of an abnormal tension.A figure was stealing along in the not very distinct moonlight; a human figure or—was it? Suddenly it stopped, half in shadow.“Hi! Hallo! Who’s that,” I sung out.There was no answer. Then I remembered that with my mind running upon Hensley I had used English. Yet the figure was that of a native. It wanted not the blackness of it in the uncertain light; the stealthy, sinuous movement of it was enough to show that. Yet, this certainty only enhanced the mystery. Natives are not wont to prowl about after dark with no apparent object, especially alone. In the first place they have a very whole-hearted dread of the night side of Nature—in the next such a proceeding is apt to gain for them more than a suspicion of practising the arts of witchcraft—a fatal reputation to set up yonder beyond the river, and, I hesitate not to assert, a very dangerous one to gain even here on the Queen’s side.The figure straightened up, causing my fool of a horse to snort and describe further antics. Then a voice:“Inkose! Iqalaqala. Be not afraid. It is only Ukozi, who watches over the world while the world sleeps—ah—ah! while the world sleeps.”I must own to feeling something of a thrill at the name. This Ukozi was a diviner, or witch doctor, whose reputation was second to none among the Natal border tribes—ay and a great deal wider—and that is saying a good deal. Now of course the very mention of a witch doctor should arouse nothing but contemptuous merriment; yet the pretentions of the class are not all humbug by any means, indeed I have known a good few white men—hard bitten, up-country going men with no nonsense or superstition about them—who never fail to treat a genuine native witch doctor with very real consideration indeed.“Greeting, father of mystery,” I answered, with some vague idea that the meeting all so unexpected and somewhat weird, might yet be not without its bearings on the fate of Hensley. “You are bent uponmútiindeed, when the world is half through its dark time and the moon is low.”“M-m!” he hummed. “The moon is low. Just so, Iqalaqala. You will not go home to-night.”“Not go home!” I echoed, meaning to humour him, and yet, in my innermost self, conscious that there was a very real note of curiosity that could only come of whole, or partial, belief in the question. “And why should I not go home to-night?”He shrugged his shoulders impressively. Then he said:“Who may tell? But—you will not.”I tried to laugh good-humouredly, but it was not genuine. Yet was not the thing absurd? Here was I, letting myself be humbugged—almost scared—by an old charlatan of a witch doctor, a fellow who made a comfortable living out of his credulous countrymen by fooling them with charms and spells and omens, and all sorts of similar quackery—I, a white man, with—I haven’t mentioned it before—an English public school education.“Here, my father,” I said, producing a goodly twist of roll tobacco. “This is good—always good—whether by a comfortable fire, or searching formútimaterials under the moon.”He received it, in the hollow of both hands, as the native way is. I saw before me in the moonlight what was not at all the popular conception of the witch doctor—a little shrivelled being with furtive, cunning looks, and snaky eyes. No. This was a middle-aged man of fine stature, and broadly and strongly built: destitute too of charms or amulets in the way of adornments. His head-ring glistened in the moonlight, and for all clothing he wore the usualmútya. In fact the only peculiarity about him was that he had but one eye.“What has become of Nyamaki?” I said, filling and lighting my pipe.“U’ Nyamaki? Has he gone then?” was the answer which, of course, was a bit of assumed ignorance.“Now how can the father of wisdom ask such a question?” I said. “He—to whom nothing is dark!”Ukozi’s face was as a mask. He uttered a single grunt—that was all.“The whites will offer large reward to the man who finds him,” I went on.“Will he who sits yonder”—meaning my recent entertainer—“offer large reward?” was the answer, a sudden whimsical flash illuminating the dark, impassive face.“That I cannot say. But I should think it probable. And now you are seeking midnightmútiso as to obtain such reward. Take care,” I went on, chaffing him. “To wander at midnight would not be safela pa,” pointing in the direction of the Zulu country. “But here we are under the Queen.”“The Queen!Au! Even the Queen cannot do everything.”“She just about can though,” I answered decisively.“Can she find Nyamaki?” he said, putting his head on one side.This was a facer. I didn’t know what the deuce to answer. While I was hesitating he went on:“Au! Well, Iqalaqala, turn back and make your bed with him yonder, for you will not go home to-nightHamba gahle.”“Hlala gahle, father of mystery,” I answered lightly touching my horse with the spur.You will think it strange I should make so light of his warning, yet as I resumed my way up the valley, no thought of material danger came into my mind as I pondered over it. I would show him that wise as he was, and great his reputation, yet he did not know everything. I would have the crow of him next time we met, when—My horse had suddenly cocked his ears, then uttering a loud snort he stopped dead—so suddenly indeed that I as nearly as possible pitched over his head. Yet, there was nothing in sight.The path, here rather steep, narrowed between high thick bush, just over which on either hand, rose two straight but entirely insignificant krantzes.“He has seen a snake, a big mamba perhaps,” I decided. “Well, let the brute crawl away, as he’s sure to do if alarmed. Then we’ll get on again.”But we didn’t. I shouted a little, and swished at the bushes with my whip. Then I spurred my horse forward again. The confounded animal wouldn’t budge.“Here, this won’t do,” I said to myself feeling angry. Then I got off. If the fool wouldn’t go in the ordinary way perhaps he would lead. Would he? Not a bit of it; on the contrary he rucked back at his bridle so violently as nearly to tear it out of my hand. I got into the saddle again.“Now you’ve got to go, damn it!” I growled, letting him have both rowels till I thought I could hear the bones squeak.In response he first plunged violently, then kicked, then reared, finally slewing round so quickly as nearly to unseat me. And now I became aware of a strange sickly scent, almost like that of a drug—yet how could it be? Then, as it grew stronger, it took on a vile effluvium as of something dead. Yet; I had passed over that very spot but a few hours back, and nothing of the kind had been there then. The horse was now standing quite still, his head towards the way we had come, all in a sweat and trembling violently.And now I own that some of his scare began to take hold of me. What did it mean—what the very deuce did it mean? What infernal witchcraft was this that could hold me up here on a path I had ridden several times before, on this identical horse too? Yet, here in the still ghostly midnight hour alone, the affair began to grow dashed creepy. I made one more attempt, and that a half-hearted one—then giving the horse the rein let him take his own way, and that way was straight back to Kendrew’s.Some thought of making adétour, and passing the bewitched point by taking a wide sweep, came into my mind, but that would have involved some infernally rough travelling, besides the moon wouldn’t last much longer, and who could say whether the result might not turn out the same, for by now the witch doctor’s declaration had carried its full weight. So I was soon knocking Kendrew out of his first sleep, with literally a lame excuse to the effect that my steed had gone lame, and it was no use trying to get over two hours of rough road with him that night.“All right, old chap,” sung out Kendrew, in a jolly voice, as he let me in. “Have a glass of grog first, and then we’ll take him round to the stable. You can turn in in any room you like.”I hoped he wouldn’t notice that neither then nor on the following morning did my horse show the slightest sign of lameness. But I had made up my mind to say no word to him of what had occurred—and didn’t.

It is a strange, and I suppose a wholesomely-humiliating thing that we are appointed to go through life learning how little we know ourselves. Here was I, a man no longer young, with considerable experience of the ways of the world, rough and smooth, and under the fixed impression that if there was one man in the said wide and wicked world whom I knew thoroughly, in and out, from the crown of his hat to the soles of his boots—orvelschoenen, as the case might be—that man was Godfrey Glanton, trader in the Zulu. And yet I had lived to learn that I didn’t know him at all.

For instance the happy-go-lucky, free-and-easy, semi-lonely life that had satisfied me for so many years seemed no longer satisfying; yet why not, seeing that all its conditions prevailed as before? I had enough for my needs, and if I didn’t make a fortune out of my trade, whether stationary or from time to time peripatetic, I had always made a steady profit. Now, however, it came home to me that this was a state of things hardly the best for a man to live and die in.

Again why not? I had seen contemporaries of my own—men circumstanced like myself who had come to the same conclusion. They had left it—only to come to grief in unfamiliar undertakings. Or they had married; only to find that they had better have elected to go through the rest of life with a chain and ball hung round their necks, than strapped to some nagging woman full of affectations and ailments—and raising a brood of progeny far more likely to prove a curse to them than anything else; thanks to the holy and gentle maternal influence aforesaid. All this I had seen, and yet, here I was, feeling restless and unsatisfied because for several days the recollection of a certain sweet and refined face, lit up by a pair of large, appealing eyes, had haunted my solitary hours.

It was that time since I had seen my neighbours. I had heard of them through my usual sources of information, and they seemed to me to be getting along all right; wherefore I had forborne to pay another visit lest it might have the appearance of “hanging around.” And by way of combating an inclination to do so now, I made up my mind to carry out a deferred intention, viz., pay a visit to Hensley’s place.

Tyingoza had been over to see me a couple of times, but made no allusion whatever to Falkner Sewin’s act of boyish idiocy: presumably rating it at its proper standard. But, I noticed that he wore a new head-ring. However, I hoped that was an incident forgotten; and as I heard nothing to the contrary, and my trade ran on as usual, I made no further reference to it either to Tyingoza or anybody else.

I arrived at the scene of Hensley’s disappearance about mid-day. The homestead stood in a long, narrow valley, thickly bushed. Behind, and almost overhanging it, was a great krantz whose smooth ironstone wall glowed like a vast slab of red-hot metal. The place was wild and picturesque to a degree, but—oh so hot!

Two men in shirts and trousers were playing quoits as I came up. I didn’t know either of them by sight.

“Good day,” said one of them, knocking off his play, and coming up. “Off-saddle won’t you? Dashed hot, isn’t it?”

“Thanks. I’m Glanton, from Isipanga,” I said in answer to his look of enquiry.

“Oh. Glad to know you, Glanton. I’m Kendrew, from nowhere in particular, at least not just now, price of transport being tooslegfor anything.”

“Oh, you ride transport then? How many waggons?”

“Three in good times—one in bad; none in worse—as in the present case. This is Sergeant Simcox, of the N.M.P.,” introducing the other man, whom I noticed wore uniform trousers and boots. “He’s been helping me to look for my poor old uncle, you know.”

“Oh, Hensley was your uncle, was he?”

“Rather. But I’m next-of-kin—so if he’s not found I take. See?” with a comprehensive wink and jerk of the head which took in the surroundings.

I couldn’t help laughing at his coolness. He was a tall, rather good-looking young fellow, all wire and whipcord, with a chronically whimsical expression. The police sergeant was a hard bitten looking customer, typical of his line in life.

“Now what do you think of the affair?” I said. “Did you know Hensley well?”

“Hanged if I did. He didn’t like me. Did you?”

“Not very. I used to ride over and look him up now and again. But I can’t imagine him doing anything mysterious. In fact I should say he’d be the last man in the world to do it.”

“Ja. I don’t know what to think of it. I’ve been running the place since I heard of the affair—luckily I wasn’t on the road just then so was able to. You’ll stop and have some scoff of course—you too, sergeant?”

“Wish I could,” said the latter, “but it’s against rules. Must get back to my camp.”

“Hang rules. Who’s to know? Glanton here won’t split.”

He was right, wherefore I forbear to say whether Sergeant Simcox made the third at that festive board or not.

We talked of trade and transport-riding and frontier matters generally, but surprisingly little of the matter that had brought me there. In fact Kendrew rather seemed to shirk the subject; not in any sort of suspicious manner let me explain, but rather as if he thought the whole thing a bore, and a very great one at that.

“You see, Glanton,” he explained, presumably detecting a surprised look on my face, called there by the exceedingly light way in which he was taking things. “You see it isn’t as if we had had a lot to do with each other. Of course I don’t for a moment hope that the poor old boy has come to grief, in fact I can’t help feeling that he may turn up any moment and want to know what the devil I’ve taken up my quarters at his place for, in this free and easy way.”

After a good dinner, washed down with a glass or so of grog, we went to look at the place where the missing man had slept. This didn’t help towards any theory. If there had been foul play, whoever had been concerned in it had removed all traces long ago.

“A good hound, requisitioned at first, would have done something towards clearing up the mystery,” I said.

“Yes, but you might as well have requisitioned a good elephant, for all you’d get either round here,” laughed Kendrew. “Well, I shall just give it up as a bad job and leave it to Simcox. That’s what he draws his pay for. I’ll just sit tight and boss up things so long. That’s my job.”

“I’d like to have a word or two with the boy who saw him last,” I said. “Alone I mean.”

“Think you can get him to talk, eh? Well perhaps you may—I’ve heard of you, Glanton, and what a chap you are for managing Kafirs. All right, stop on till this evening, the boy’s out herding now. Then you canindabahim to your heart’s content after supper. You’ll stay the night of course.”

But I urged that such was not in my programme, and in fact I had some business to attend to next day irrespective of mere retail trade in the store. So we compromised by my consenting to remain till evening. There was sufficient moon for me to ride home by even if it rose somewhat late. I suggested that we should ride out into the veldt in the afternoon and I could interview the boy there. He would talk more freely that way, and Kendrew agreed.

The boy was a quiet, decent looking youngster, and was herding his flock in most exemplary fashion. I asked him his name.

“Pecamane, ’Nkose!”

“Have I seen you before?”

“More than once,Nkose. At Isipanga, at the store. Then again, when we danced and ate beef.”

“Ah. You were there then? Who is your chief?”

“Tyingoza,Nkose.”

Kendrew had ridden on, leaving me alone with the boy.

“Well then,” I said, “if Tyingoza is your chief you will be safe in tellingmethe story of your master’s ‘who is no longer here.’”

“Ou!Nkose. The only story I have to tell is what I told to theAmapolise, and he who now sits here”—meaning Kendrew. “But it is no story.”

He was right there, in that like the tale of the empty bottle there was nothing in it. His master had given him some final orders after supper, and he had gone over to the huts for the night. He was employed in the stable then.

And no one had opened the stable?

No, it was locked, and his master had the key. They had been obliged to break open the door in the morning to get at the horses.

There you see, there was nothing in this story, but then I had never expected there would be. What I wanted was to watch the face and note the manner of its narrator. This I had done, and keenly, with the result that I felt convinced that the boy knew no more about Hensley’s disappearance than I did myself. Upon this the police sergeant subsequently waxed somewhat superior. He resented the idea that what had baffled the wit of the police and native detectives combined might stand the slightest chance of being cleared up by me. However I didn’t take offence, although my opinion of the abilities of his force was but medium, and that of the native detectives nowhere, though this applied more to their morality than ingenuity. It happened that I was in a position to know something of the methods of the latter in “getting up” cases.

“Well good-bye, Glanton,” said Kendrew, as we shook hands. “Devilish glad you came over in a friendly way. And, I say—mind you repeat the operation and that often. I like a jolly, good sort of neighbourly neighbour.”

I promised him I would, as I climbed into the saddle—and the great krantz seemed to echo back our cheery good-bye in ghostly refrain.

I liked Kendrew, I decided as I rode along. He struck me as a lively, cheery sort of fellow with lots of fun in him, and not an atom of harm. Decidedly as a neighbour he would be an improvement on his poor old relative, who although a good chap enough had always been a bit of a fossil. That’s one of the advantages of the up-country or frontier life, you take a man as you find him and no make believe, or stiffness or ceremony. If he’s a good fellow he is, and all the better. If he isn’t why then he isn’t, and you needn’t have any more to do with him than you want, or make any pretence about it.

In the solitude as I took my way through the thorns the recollection of Hensley came upon me again, and I confess, as I thought upon it there, under the midnight moon—for I had started back rather later than I had intended—a sort of creepy feeling came over me. What the deuce had become of the man? If he had got a fit of mental aberration, and taken himself off, he would have left some spoor, yet no sign of any had been lighted upon by those who had again and again made diligent search. I looked around. The bush sprays seemed to take on all manner of weird shapes; and once my horse, shying and snorting at a big hare, squatting up on its haunches like a big idiot, bang in the middle of the path, gave me quite an unpleasant start. The black brow of the krantz cut the misty, star-speckled skyline now receding on my left behind—and then—my horse gave forth another snort and at the same time shied so violently as to have unseated me, but that my nerves were—again I confess it—at something of an abnormal tension.

A figure was stealing along in the not very distinct moonlight; a human figure or—was it? Suddenly it stopped, half in shadow.

“Hi! Hallo! Who’s that,” I sung out.

There was no answer. Then I remembered that with my mind running upon Hensley I had used English. Yet the figure was that of a native. It wanted not the blackness of it in the uncertain light; the stealthy, sinuous movement of it was enough to show that. Yet, this certainty only enhanced the mystery. Natives are not wont to prowl about after dark with no apparent object, especially alone. In the first place they have a very whole-hearted dread of the night side of Nature—in the next such a proceeding is apt to gain for them more than a suspicion of practising the arts of witchcraft—a fatal reputation to set up yonder beyond the river, and, I hesitate not to assert, a very dangerous one to gain even here on the Queen’s side.

The figure straightened up, causing my fool of a horse to snort and describe further antics. Then a voice:

“Inkose! Iqalaqala. Be not afraid. It is only Ukozi, who watches over the world while the world sleeps—ah—ah! while the world sleeps.”

I must own to feeling something of a thrill at the name. This Ukozi was a diviner, or witch doctor, whose reputation was second to none among the Natal border tribes—ay and a great deal wider—and that is saying a good deal. Now of course the very mention of a witch doctor should arouse nothing but contemptuous merriment; yet the pretentions of the class are not all humbug by any means, indeed I have known a good few white men—hard bitten, up-country going men with no nonsense or superstition about them—who never fail to treat a genuine native witch doctor with very real consideration indeed.

“Greeting, father of mystery,” I answered, with some vague idea that the meeting all so unexpected and somewhat weird, might yet be not without its bearings on the fate of Hensley. “You are bent uponmútiindeed, when the world is half through its dark time and the moon is low.”

“M-m!” he hummed. “The moon is low. Just so, Iqalaqala. You will not go home to-night.”

“Not go home!” I echoed, meaning to humour him, and yet, in my innermost self, conscious that there was a very real note of curiosity that could only come of whole, or partial, belief in the question. “And why should I not go home to-night?”

He shrugged his shoulders impressively. Then he said:

“Who may tell? But—you will not.”

I tried to laugh good-humouredly, but it was not genuine. Yet was not the thing absurd? Here was I, letting myself be humbugged—almost scared—by an old charlatan of a witch doctor, a fellow who made a comfortable living out of his credulous countrymen by fooling them with charms and spells and omens, and all sorts of similar quackery—I, a white man, with—I haven’t mentioned it before—an English public school education.

“Here, my father,” I said, producing a goodly twist of roll tobacco. “This is good—always good—whether by a comfortable fire, or searching formútimaterials under the moon.”

He received it, in the hollow of both hands, as the native way is. I saw before me in the moonlight what was not at all the popular conception of the witch doctor—a little shrivelled being with furtive, cunning looks, and snaky eyes. No. This was a middle-aged man of fine stature, and broadly and strongly built: destitute too of charms or amulets in the way of adornments. His head-ring glistened in the moonlight, and for all clothing he wore the usualmútya. In fact the only peculiarity about him was that he had but one eye.

“What has become of Nyamaki?” I said, filling and lighting my pipe.

“U’ Nyamaki? Has he gone then?” was the answer which, of course, was a bit of assumed ignorance.

“Now how can the father of wisdom ask such a question?” I said. “He—to whom nothing is dark!”

Ukozi’s face was as a mask. He uttered a single grunt—that was all.

“The whites will offer large reward to the man who finds him,” I went on.

“Will he who sits yonder”—meaning my recent entertainer—“offer large reward?” was the answer, a sudden whimsical flash illuminating the dark, impassive face.

“That I cannot say. But I should think it probable. And now you are seeking midnightmútiso as to obtain such reward. Take care,” I went on, chaffing him. “To wander at midnight would not be safela pa,” pointing in the direction of the Zulu country. “But here we are under the Queen.”

“The Queen!Au! Even the Queen cannot do everything.”

“She just about can though,” I answered decisively.

“Can she find Nyamaki?” he said, putting his head on one side.

This was a facer. I didn’t know what the deuce to answer. While I was hesitating he went on:

“Au! Well, Iqalaqala, turn back and make your bed with him yonder, for you will not go home to-nightHamba gahle.”

“Hlala gahle, father of mystery,” I answered lightly touching my horse with the spur.

You will think it strange I should make so light of his warning, yet as I resumed my way up the valley, no thought of material danger came into my mind as I pondered over it. I would show him that wise as he was, and great his reputation, yet he did not know everything. I would have the crow of him next time we met, when—

My horse had suddenly cocked his ears, then uttering a loud snort he stopped dead—so suddenly indeed that I as nearly as possible pitched over his head. Yet, there was nothing in sight.

The path, here rather steep, narrowed between high thick bush, just over which on either hand, rose two straight but entirely insignificant krantzes.

“He has seen a snake, a big mamba perhaps,” I decided. “Well, let the brute crawl away, as he’s sure to do if alarmed. Then we’ll get on again.”

But we didn’t. I shouted a little, and swished at the bushes with my whip. Then I spurred my horse forward again. The confounded animal wouldn’t budge.

“Here, this won’t do,” I said to myself feeling angry. Then I got off. If the fool wouldn’t go in the ordinary way perhaps he would lead. Would he? Not a bit of it; on the contrary he rucked back at his bridle so violently as nearly to tear it out of my hand. I got into the saddle again.

“Now you’ve got to go, damn it!” I growled, letting him have both rowels till I thought I could hear the bones squeak.

In response he first plunged violently, then kicked, then reared, finally slewing round so quickly as nearly to unseat me. And now I became aware of a strange sickly scent, almost like that of a drug—yet how could it be? Then, as it grew stronger, it took on a vile effluvium as of something dead. Yet; I had passed over that very spot but a few hours back, and nothing of the kind had been there then. The horse was now standing quite still, his head towards the way we had come, all in a sweat and trembling violently.

And now I own that some of his scare began to take hold of me. What did it mean—what the very deuce did it mean? What infernal witchcraft was this that could hold me up here on a path I had ridden several times before, on this identical horse too? Yet, here in the still ghostly midnight hour alone, the affair began to grow dashed creepy. I made one more attempt, and that a half-hearted one—then giving the horse the rein let him take his own way, and that way was straight back to Kendrew’s.

Some thought of making adétour, and passing the bewitched point by taking a wide sweep, came into my mind, but that would have involved some infernally rough travelling, besides the moon wouldn’t last much longer, and who could say whether the result might not turn out the same, for by now the witch doctor’s declaration had carried its full weight. So I was soon knocking Kendrew out of his first sleep, with literally a lame excuse to the effect that my steed had gone lame, and it was no use trying to get over two hours of rough road with him that night.

“All right, old chap,” sung out Kendrew, in a jolly voice, as he let me in. “Have a glass of grog first, and then we’ll take him round to the stable. You can turn in in any room you like.”

I hoped he wouldn’t notice that neither then nor on the following morning did my horse show the slightest sign of lameness. But I had made up my mind to say no word to him of what had occurred—and didn’t.

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