Chapter Six.

Chapter Six.Of the Unexpected.The stranger, who was looking out of the window, turned as I entered, and I saw a tall good-looking young fellow, some three or four years my junior.“Don’t you know me?” he said, with a smile.“I’m afraid I don’t,” I answered, feeling thoroughly puzzled, and the thought flashed through my mind he must be some relative of the child I had rescued.“I wondered if you would,” he went on. “I’m Matterson—Brian Matterson. We were at old Wankley’s together.”“By Jove! Why, so it is. I’m awfully glad to meet you. It’s small wonder if I didn’t know you again, Matterson. You were a youngster then, and it must be quite a dozen years ago, if not more.”“About that,” he answered; and by this time we were “pump-handling” away like anything.“How on earth did you find me out, though?” I asked. “I don’t know a soul in the land.”“That’s just it. I got on your spoor by the merest fluke. Was in at the bank this morning on business, and while I was yarning with Marshbanks I saw your card lying on the table. That made me skip, I can tell you, for I thought there couldn’t be twoKenrickHolts; if it had been Tom or George, or any name like that, of course it wouldn’t have been so certain. Marshbanks said you had called on him not very long before me, and he was sorry to have to disappoint you, because you looked a decent sort of chap; but still, biz was biz.”“Oh, I don’t blame him in the least,” I said. “I fully recognise that maxim myself.”“Well, I told him if you were the chap I thought, he need raise no furtherindabaabout accommodating you, because I’d take the responsibility. So we’ll stroll round presently and look him up, and put the thing all right.”“Awfully good of you, Matterson. In fact, you’ve no idea what running against you like this means to me, apart from the ordinary pleasure of meeting an old pal. Did the manager tell you how I got here?”“Yes, and it struck me that a shipwrecked mariner leaving home suddenly like you did might have come, well—hum!—rather unprepared, so I lost no time in putting you right with Marshbanks. And now, what are your plans?”“Why, to get back home again.”“I wouldn’t hurry about that if I were you. Why not come and stay with us a bit? The governor’ll be delighted, if you can put up with things a bit plain. We can show you a little of the country, and what life on a stock farm is like. A little in the way of sport too, though there’s a sight too many Kafirs round us for that to be as good as it ought.”“My dear chap, I shall be only too delighted. You can imagine how gay and festive I’ve been feeling, thrown up here like a stranded log, not knowing a living soul, and with seven pound nine and a halfpenny—and that already dipped into—for worldly wealth until I could hear from home.”“By Jove! Is that all? Well, it’s a good job I spotted your card on Marshbanks’ table.”“Here, we’ll have a drink to our merry meeting,” I said, rapping on the table by way of hailing the perspiring barman aforesaid. “What’s yours, Matterson?”“Oh, a French and soda goes down as well as anything. Only, as this is my country, the drinks are mine too, Holt. So don’t put your hand in your pocket now. Here’s luck! Welcome to South Africa.”We had been schoolfellows together, as Brian Matterson had said, but the three or four years between our ages, though nothing now, had been everything then. I remembered him a quiet, rather melancholy sort of boy on his first arrival from his distant colonial home, and in his capacity of new boy had once or twice protected him from the rougher pranks of bigger fellows. But he had soon learned to take his own part, never having been any sort of a fool, and, possibly by reason of his earliest training, had turned out as good at games and athletics as many bigger and older fellows than himself. We had little enough to do with each other then by reason of the difference in our ages, yet we might have been the greatest chums if the genuine cordiality wherewith he now welcomed me here—in this, to me, distant and strange country—went for anything.We strolled round to the bank, and the manager was full of apologies, but I wouldn’t hear any, telling him I quite understood his position, and would almost certainly have acted in the same way myself. Then, our business satisfactorily disposed of, Brian and I went round to a store or two to procure a little clothing and a trunk, for my wardrobe was somewhat scanty. But such things as I could procure would not have furnished good advertisements for a first-rate London tailor or hosier.“Don’t you bother about that, Holt,” Brian said. “You don’t want much in the way of clothes in our life. Fit doesn’t matter—wear and comfort’s everything.” And I judged I could not do better than be guided by his experience.We were to start early the next morning, and had nearly two days’ drive before us. This was not their district town, Brian explained to me; indeed, it was the merest chance that he was down here at all, but his father and a neighbour or two had been trying the experiment of shipping their wool direct to England, and he had come down to attend to it. He was sending the waggons back almost empty, but we would return in his buggy. At my suggestion that my surprise visit might prove inconvenient to his people he simply laughed.“We don’t bother about set invites in this country, Holt,” he said. “Our friends are always welcome, though of course they mustn’t expect the luxury of a first-class English hotel. You won’t put us out, so make your mind quite easy as to that.”Late in the afternoon we parted. Brian was due to drive out to a farm eight or ten miles off—on business of a stock-dealing nature—and sleep, but it was arranged he should call for me in the morning any time after sunrise.There is a superstition current to the effect that when things are at their worst they mend, and assuredly this last experience of mine was a case confirming it. An hour or so ago here was I, stranded, a waif and a stray, upon a very distant shore, a stranger in a strange land, wondering what on earth I was going to do next, either to keep myself while in it or get out of it again. And now I had all unexpectedly found a friend, and was about to set forth with that friend upon a pleasure visit fraught with every delightful kind of novelty. There was one crumple in the rose-leaf, however. We were starting early the next morning, and I should have no opportunity of seeing Morrissey and my excellent friends of theKittiwakeagain. I went round to the agents, however, and inquired if there was no way of sending any note or message to the ship, and was disgusted to find that there was none that day. The bar had risen again in the afternoon, and there was no prospect of any one from the shipping in the roadstead coming ashore. So I left a note for the captain, expressing—well, a great deal more than I could ever have told in so many words.I was up in good time next morning, and had just got outside of a muddy concoction whose principal flavour was wood-fire smoke, and was euphemistically termed coffee, when Brian Matterson drove up in a Cape cart.“Hallo, Holt,” he sang out. “You’re in training early. You see, with us a fellow has to turn out early, if only that everybody else does, even if he himself has nothing particular to do. Well, in this case I might have given you a little longer, because I’ve got to pick up a thing or two at the store, and it won’t be open just yet, and then my little sister’s coming to have a look at me at the pontoon by way of good-bye. She’s staying with some people down here at a seaside camp—I brought her down when I came four days ago—and wants to say good-bye, you know. She’s a dear little kid, and I wouldn’t disappoint her for anything. Now trot out your luggage, and we’ll splice it on behind.”We got hold of a sable myrmidon who was “boots” and general handyman about the place, a queer good-humoured aboriginal with his wool grown long and standing out like unravelled rope around his head, and having hauled out my new trunk, bound it on behind the trap with the regulation raw hidereim. Then we thought we might as well have some breakfast before starting, and did.It was about seven o’clock when we started, but the sun’s rays were already manifest, even through the shelter of the canvas awning. The horses, a pair of flea-bitten roans, were not much to look at, being smallish, though sturdy and compact, but in hard condition, and up to any amount of work. We picked up some things at the store, and then it seemed to me we had hardly started before we pulled up again. There was the white of a sunshade by the roadside, and under it the flutter of a feminine dress. I recognised one of the girls who had come out to meet the little one to whose aid I had so opportunely come the day before, and—great heavens!—with her was my little friend herself.“Hallo, Iris,” sung out Brian Matterson. “Get up, now; I’ve got to take you back. Just had a note from Beryl to say you re to go back at once. Jump up, now.”The little one laughed, showing a row of white teeth, and shook her pretty head.“No fear,” she replied. “Keep that yarn for next time, Brian.” Then, catching sight of me, she started and stared, reduced to silence. The while I was conscious of being introduced to Miss Somebody or other, whose name I couldn’t for the life of me catch, and, judging from the stiff awkwardness wherewith she acknowledged the introduction, I was sure she could not catch mine. Then, in answer to some vehement signalling on the part of the child, Brian got down and went a little way with her apart, where the two seemed immersed in animated conversation, leaving me to inform the awkward girl that it was a fine morning and likely to continue hot, and to indulge in similar banalities.Brian reascended to his seat, and relieved me of the reins. I, the while, faithful to my plighted word, showed no sign of ever having seen the child before, seeming indeed to see a certain reminder of the same in her sparkling pretty little face as she half-shyly affected to make my acquaintance. Brian kissed her tenderly, and we drove on. But before we had had gone far he turned on me suddenly.“Holt, I don’t know how to thank you, or what to say. I’ve just heard from Iris what you did yesterday. Man, you saved her life—herlife, do you hear?—and what that means to me—to us—why, blazes take it, you’ve seen her!—I don’t know how I can convey the idea better.”He was all afire with agitation—indeed, to such an extent as to astonish me, for I had set him down as rather a cool customer, and not easily perturbed. Now he continued to wax eloquent, and it made me uncomfortable. So I endeavoured to cut him short.“All right, old chap. It isn’t worth jawing about. Only too glad I was on hand at the time. Besides, nothing at all to a fellow who can swim. I say, though, I was admiring the way the little girl was at home in the water; still, she’s small, and those beastly breakers have a devil of an undertow, you know. She oughtn’t to be allowed out like that with nobody to look after her.”“That’s just it. But she bound me to secrecy, like she did you, for fear of not being allowed in again. I made her promise not to do it again though, as a condition of keeping dark.”And then he went on to expatiate on Miss Iris’ swimming perfections, and indeed every other perfection, to an extent that rather prejudiced me against her if anything, as likely to prove a spoilt handful. However, it got him out of the gratitude groove, which was all I wanted just then.That couple of days’ journey was quite one of the most delightful experiences of my life. Our way lay over beautiful rolling country dotted with flowering mimosa, and here and there intersected with a dark forest-filled kloof; and bright-winged birds flashed sheeny from our path, and on every hand the hum of busy insects made music on the warm air. Yes, it was warm; in the middle of the day very much so. But the evening was simply divine, in its hushed dewiness rich with the unfolding fragrance of innumerable subtle herbs, for we took advantage of a glorious moon to travel in the coolness. Now and again we would pass a large Kafir kraal, whose clustering beehive-shaped huts stood white in the moonlight, and thence an uproar of stamping and shouting, accompanying the rhythm of a savage song, showed that its wild denizens were holding high festivity at any rate; and the sound of the barbarous revel rising loud and clear upon the still night air, came to me with an effect that was wholly weird and imposing.“Seems as if I had suddenly leaped outside civilisation altogether,” I remarked as we passed one of these kraals, whose inhabitants paused in their revelry to send after us a long loud halloo, partly good-humoured, partly insolent. And I gave my companion the benefit of my preconceived notions of the Kafir, whereat he laughed greatly.“It’s funny how these notions get about, Holt,” he said. “Now you have seen a glimpse of your meek, down-trodden black—only he’s generally red—since you landed, and you can the more easily realise it when I tell you he’d cut all our throats with the greatest pleasure in life if he dared. There are enough of them to do it any night in the year; but, providentially, there’s never any cohesion among savages, and these chaps won’t trust each other, which is our salvation, for they simply swarm as to numbers. What do you say? Shall we outspan and make a night of it on the veldt? There’s an accommodation house a mile or so further on, but it’s a beastly hole, and the people none too civil.”Of course I voted for camping, and as Brian’s forethought had provided a supply of cold meat and bread and cheese, as well as a bottle of grog, we fared (relatively) sumptuously, and thereafter the last thing I knew was my first pipe dropping out of my mouth very soon indeed after I had lighted it.We inspanned early the next morning, and as we progressed our way became more hilly. Thick bush came down to the road in many places, and twice we forded a drift of a river, whose muddy and turbid current rose to the axles. The high broken country, copiously bush-clad, was delightful to the eye, but oh, the heat of the sun in those scorching valley bottoms, where, when we were not jolting over uneven masses of stone, were wallowing painfully through inches and inches of thick red dust. Now and then we would pass a string of transport waggons, or a traveller on horseback, and in the middle of the day we outspanned at a farm of the rougher kind. Towards evening we entered a long, wild, beautiful valley resonant with the cooing of doves and other sounds of evening peace, the bleating of homing flocks and the lowing of cattle; and as we rounded a bush-clad spur and a homestead came into view I felt no surprise that Brian Matterson should turn to me with the remark—“Here we are at last, Holt; and there’s Beryl, on the look-out for us.”

The stranger, who was looking out of the window, turned as I entered, and I saw a tall good-looking young fellow, some three or four years my junior.

“Don’t you know me?” he said, with a smile.

“I’m afraid I don’t,” I answered, feeling thoroughly puzzled, and the thought flashed through my mind he must be some relative of the child I had rescued.

“I wondered if you would,” he went on. “I’m Matterson—Brian Matterson. We were at old Wankley’s together.”

“By Jove! Why, so it is. I’m awfully glad to meet you. It’s small wonder if I didn’t know you again, Matterson. You were a youngster then, and it must be quite a dozen years ago, if not more.”

“About that,” he answered; and by this time we were “pump-handling” away like anything.

“How on earth did you find me out, though?” I asked. “I don’t know a soul in the land.”

“That’s just it. I got on your spoor by the merest fluke. Was in at the bank this morning on business, and while I was yarning with Marshbanks I saw your card lying on the table. That made me skip, I can tell you, for I thought there couldn’t be twoKenrickHolts; if it had been Tom or George, or any name like that, of course it wouldn’t have been so certain. Marshbanks said you had called on him not very long before me, and he was sorry to have to disappoint you, because you looked a decent sort of chap; but still, biz was biz.”

“Oh, I don’t blame him in the least,” I said. “I fully recognise that maxim myself.”

“Well, I told him if you were the chap I thought, he need raise no furtherindabaabout accommodating you, because I’d take the responsibility. So we’ll stroll round presently and look him up, and put the thing all right.”

“Awfully good of you, Matterson. In fact, you’ve no idea what running against you like this means to me, apart from the ordinary pleasure of meeting an old pal. Did the manager tell you how I got here?”

“Yes, and it struck me that a shipwrecked mariner leaving home suddenly like you did might have come, well—hum!—rather unprepared, so I lost no time in putting you right with Marshbanks. And now, what are your plans?”

“Why, to get back home again.”

“I wouldn’t hurry about that if I were you. Why not come and stay with us a bit? The governor’ll be delighted, if you can put up with things a bit plain. We can show you a little of the country, and what life on a stock farm is like. A little in the way of sport too, though there’s a sight too many Kafirs round us for that to be as good as it ought.”

“My dear chap, I shall be only too delighted. You can imagine how gay and festive I’ve been feeling, thrown up here like a stranded log, not knowing a living soul, and with seven pound nine and a halfpenny—and that already dipped into—for worldly wealth until I could hear from home.”

“By Jove! Is that all? Well, it’s a good job I spotted your card on Marshbanks’ table.”

“Here, we’ll have a drink to our merry meeting,” I said, rapping on the table by way of hailing the perspiring barman aforesaid. “What’s yours, Matterson?”

“Oh, a French and soda goes down as well as anything. Only, as this is my country, the drinks are mine too, Holt. So don’t put your hand in your pocket now. Here’s luck! Welcome to South Africa.”

We had been schoolfellows together, as Brian Matterson had said, but the three or four years between our ages, though nothing now, had been everything then. I remembered him a quiet, rather melancholy sort of boy on his first arrival from his distant colonial home, and in his capacity of new boy had once or twice protected him from the rougher pranks of bigger fellows. But he had soon learned to take his own part, never having been any sort of a fool, and, possibly by reason of his earliest training, had turned out as good at games and athletics as many bigger and older fellows than himself. We had little enough to do with each other then by reason of the difference in our ages, yet we might have been the greatest chums if the genuine cordiality wherewith he now welcomed me here—in this, to me, distant and strange country—went for anything.

We strolled round to the bank, and the manager was full of apologies, but I wouldn’t hear any, telling him I quite understood his position, and would almost certainly have acted in the same way myself. Then, our business satisfactorily disposed of, Brian and I went round to a store or two to procure a little clothing and a trunk, for my wardrobe was somewhat scanty. But such things as I could procure would not have furnished good advertisements for a first-rate London tailor or hosier.

“Don’t you bother about that, Holt,” Brian said. “You don’t want much in the way of clothes in our life. Fit doesn’t matter—wear and comfort’s everything.” And I judged I could not do better than be guided by his experience.

We were to start early the next morning, and had nearly two days’ drive before us. This was not their district town, Brian explained to me; indeed, it was the merest chance that he was down here at all, but his father and a neighbour or two had been trying the experiment of shipping their wool direct to England, and he had come down to attend to it. He was sending the waggons back almost empty, but we would return in his buggy. At my suggestion that my surprise visit might prove inconvenient to his people he simply laughed.

“We don’t bother about set invites in this country, Holt,” he said. “Our friends are always welcome, though of course they mustn’t expect the luxury of a first-class English hotel. You won’t put us out, so make your mind quite easy as to that.”

Late in the afternoon we parted. Brian was due to drive out to a farm eight or ten miles off—on business of a stock-dealing nature—and sleep, but it was arranged he should call for me in the morning any time after sunrise.

There is a superstition current to the effect that when things are at their worst they mend, and assuredly this last experience of mine was a case confirming it. An hour or so ago here was I, stranded, a waif and a stray, upon a very distant shore, a stranger in a strange land, wondering what on earth I was going to do next, either to keep myself while in it or get out of it again. And now I had all unexpectedly found a friend, and was about to set forth with that friend upon a pleasure visit fraught with every delightful kind of novelty. There was one crumple in the rose-leaf, however. We were starting early the next morning, and I should have no opportunity of seeing Morrissey and my excellent friends of theKittiwakeagain. I went round to the agents, however, and inquired if there was no way of sending any note or message to the ship, and was disgusted to find that there was none that day. The bar had risen again in the afternoon, and there was no prospect of any one from the shipping in the roadstead coming ashore. So I left a note for the captain, expressing—well, a great deal more than I could ever have told in so many words.

I was up in good time next morning, and had just got outside of a muddy concoction whose principal flavour was wood-fire smoke, and was euphemistically termed coffee, when Brian Matterson drove up in a Cape cart.

“Hallo, Holt,” he sang out. “You’re in training early. You see, with us a fellow has to turn out early, if only that everybody else does, even if he himself has nothing particular to do. Well, in this case I might have given you a little longer, because I’ve got to pick up a thing or two at the store, and it won’t be open just yet, and then my little sister’s coming to have a look at me at the pontoon by way of good-bye. She’s staying with some people down here at a seaside camp—I brought her down when I came four days ago—and wants to say good-bye, you know. She’s a dear little kid, and I wouldn’t disappoint her for anything. Now trot out your luggage, and we’ll splice it on behind.”

We got hold of a sable myrmidon who was “boots” and general handyman about the place, a queer good-humoured aboriginal with his wool grown long and standing out like unravelled rope around his head, and having hauled out my new trunk, bound it on behind the trap with the regulation raw hidereim. Then we thought we might as well have some breakfast before starting, and did.

It was about seven o’clock when we started, but the sun’s rays were already manifest, even through the shelter of the canvas awning. The horses, a pair of flea-bitten roans, were not much to look at, being smallish, though sturdy and compact, but in hard condition, and up to any amount of work. We picked up some things at the store, and then it seemed to me we had hardly started before we pulled up again. There was the white of a sunshade by the roadside, and under it the flutter of a feminine dress. I recognised one of the girls who had come out to meet the little one to whose aid I had so opportunely come the day before, and—great heavens!—with her was my little friend herself.

“Hallo, Iris,” sung out Brian Matterson. “Get up, now; I’ve got to take you back. Just had a note from Beryl to say you re to go back at once. Jump up, now.”

The little one laughed, showing a row of white teeth, and shook her pretty head.

“No fear,” she replied. “Keep that yarn for next time, Brian.” Then, catching sight of me, she started and stared, reduced to silence. The while I was conscious of being introduced to Miss Somebody or other, whose name I couldn’t for the life of me catch, and, judging from the stiff awkwardness wherewith she acknowledged the introduction, I was sure she could not catch mine. Then, in answer to some vehement signalling on the part of the child, Brian got down and went a little way with her apart, where the two seemed immersed in animated conversation, leaving me to inform the awkward girl that it was a fine morning and likely to continue hot, and to indulge in similar banalities.

Brian reascended to his seat, and relieved me of the reins. I, the while, faithful to my plighted word, showed no sign of ever having seen the child before, seeming indeed to see a certain reminder of the same in her sparkling pretty little face as she half-shyly affected to make my acquaintance. Brian kissed her tenderly, and we drove on. But before we had had gone far he turned on me suddenly.

“Holt, I don’t know how to thank you, or what to say. I’ve just heard from Iris what you did yesterday. Man, you saved her life—herlife, do you hear?—and what that means to me—to us—why, blazes take it, you’ve seen her!—I don’t know how I can convey the idea better.”

He was all afire with agitation—indeed, to such an extent as to astonish me, for I had set him down as rather a cool customer, and not easily perturbed. Now he continued to wax eloquent, and it made me uncomfortable. So I endeavoured to cut him short.

“All right, old chap. It isn’t worth jawing about. Only too glad I was on hand at the time. Besides, nothing at all to a fellow who can swim. I say, though, I was admiring the way the little girl was at home in the water; still, she’s small, and those beastly breakers have a devil of an undertow, you know. She oughtn’t to be allowed out like that with nobody to look after her.”

“That’s just it. But she bound me to secrecy, like she did you, for fear of not being allowed in again. I made her promise not to do it again though, as a condition of keeping dark.”

And then he went on to expatiate on Miss Iris’ swimming perfections, and indeed every other perfection, to an extent that rather prejudiced me against her if anything, as likely to prove a spoilt handful. However, it got him out of the gratitude groove, which was all I wanted just then.

That couple of days’ journey was quite one of the most delightful experiences of my life. Our way lay over beautiful rolling country dotted with flowering mimosa, and here and there intersected with a dark forest-filled kloof; and bright-winged birds flashed sheeny from our path, and on every hand the hum of busy insects made music on the warm air. Yes, it was warm; in the middle of the day very much so. But the evening was simply divine, in its hushed dewiness rich with the unfolding fragrance of innumerable subtle herbs, for we took advantage of a glorious moon to travel in the coolness. Now and again we would pass a large Kafir kraal, whose clustering beehive-shaped huts stood white in the moonlight, and thence an uproar of stamping and shouting, accompanying the rhythm of a savage song, showed that its wild denizens were holding high festivity at any rate; and the sound of the barbarous revel rising loud and clear upon the still night air, came to me with an effect that was wholly weird and imposing.

“Seems as if I had suddenly leaped outside civilisation altogether,” I remarked as we passed one of these kraals, whose inhabitants paused in their revelry to send after us a long loud halloo, partly good-humoured, partly insolent. And I gave my companion the benefit of my preconceived notions of the Kafir, whereat he laughed greatly.

“It’s funny how these notions get about, Holt,” he said. “Now you have seen a glimpse of your meek, down-trodden black—only he’s generally red—since you landed, and you can the more easily realise it when I tell you he’d cut all our throats with the greatest pleasure in life if he dared. There are enough of them to do it any night in the year; but, providentially, there’s never any cohesion among savages, and these chaps won’t trust each other, which is our salvation, for they simply swarm as to numbers. What do you say? Shall we outspan and make a night of it on the veldt? There’s an accommodation house a mile or so further on, but it’s a beastly hole, and the people none too civil.”

Of course I voted for camping, and as Brian’s forethought had provided a supply of cold meat and bread and cheese, as well as a bottle of grog, we fared (relatively) sumptuously, and thereafter the last thing I knew was my first pipe dropping out of my mouth very soon indeed after I had lighted it.

We inspanned early the next morning, and as we progressed our way became more hilly. Thick bush came down to the road in many places, and twice we forded a drift of a river, whose muddy and turbid current rose to the axles. The high broken country, copiously bush-clad, was delightful to the eye, but oh, the heat of the sun in those scorching valley bottoms, where, when we were not jolting over uneven masses of stone, were wallowing painfully through inches and inches of thick red dust. Now and then we would pass a string of transport waggons, or a traveller on horseback, and in the middle of the day we outspanned at a farm of the rougher kind. Towards evening we entered a long, wild, beautiful valley resonant with the cooing of doves and other sounds of evening peace, the bleating of homing flocks and the lowing of cattle; and as we rounded a bush-clad spur and a homestead came into view I felt no surprise that Brian Matterson should turn to me with the remark—

“Here we are at last, Holt; and there’s Beryl, on the look-out for us.”

Chapter Seven.Beryl.He reined up the Cape cart at the gate of a picturesque verandah-fronted house which stood against a background of wild and romantic bush scenery. Not for this, however, had I any eyes at that moment; only for the personality which was framed as it were within a profusion of white cactus blossoms which overhung the garden gate.“Well, Beryl!” he sang out, as we got out of the trap. “Here’s an old school chum I picked up by the merest fluke down at East London. I brought him out here to see a little African life, so for the present I’ll hand him over to you. Give him a cool chair on the stoep, and a ditto drink, while I go and see to the outspanning, and to things in general. Dad still away, I suppose?”“Yes. He’ll be back this evening, though. I’m expecting him every minute.”“So long, then.”Now I have already explained that I am by nature a reticent animal, and may add that I have a sneaking horror of being taken for a susceptible one. Wherefore I had refrained from questioning Brian on the way hither, as to the outward appearance or inner characteristics of his elder sister, and he, while mentioning the fact that he had another sister, who kept house for them—for their mother was long since dead—and a younger brother, had not entered into details.But it would be idle to pretend I had not been indulging, and that mightily, in all sorts of speculation upon the subject, and that within my own mind. Would she resemble the little one to whose aid I had come—prove a grown-up replica of her? If so, she would be something to look at, I concluded. Yet, now that I beheld her, my first impression of Beryl Matterson was a strange mingling of interest and disappointment. Tall and very graceful of carriage, she stood there, with outstretched hand of welcome. The tint of the smooth skin was that of a dark woman, yet she had eyes of a rich violet blue—large, deep, thoughtful—and her abundant brown hair was drawn back in a wavy ripple from the temples.But that her glance, so straight and scrutinising as it met mine, became melting and tender as it rested upon her brother, I should have set her down as of a cold disposition, and withal a trifle too resolute for a woman, especially for one of her age. As it was, I hardly knew what to think. She did not greatly resemble Brian, who though also tall and handsome was very dark; yet I suspected his to be the gentler disposition of the two.“You are very welcome, Mr Holt,” she said. “How strange that Brian should have met you down there.”“It was not only strange but providential, for I was literally a shipwrecked mariner thrown up on your shore without a dry stitch on me.”And I told her briefly the plight I had found myself in, when Brian had come to the rescue. She listened with great interest.“Well, I am more than ever glad he did. But what an experience! The landing one, though, I have been through myself; the bar at East London can be too terrific for words. By the way, we have a little sister staying down there now with some friends. We thought the sea-bathing would do her good, and she’s so fond of it. Did you see her, perhaps?”“Yes. She met us outside the town to say good-bye. What a pretty child she is.”“She is, and nicely she gets spoiled on the strength of it,” laughed Beryl, but the laugh was wholly a pleasant one, without a tinge of envy or resentment in it.We chatted a little, and then she proposed we should stroll out and look at the garden and some tiny ostrich chicks she was trying to rear, and flinging on a large rough straw hat which was infinitely becoming, she led the way, down through an avenue of fig trees, and opened a light gate in the high quince hedge.Then as I stood within the coolness of the garden, which covered some acreage of the side of the slope, I gained a most wonderful impression of the place that was destined to prove my home for a long time to come, and in whose joys and sorrows—yes, and impending tragedies of dark vendetta and bloodshed—I was fated to be associated. Below the house lay the sheep kraals, and already a woolly cataract was streaming into one of the thorn-protected enclosures, while another awaited its turn at a little distance off. The cattle kraal, too, was alive with dappled hides, and one unintermittent “moo” of restless and hungry calves, while a blue curling smoke reek from the huts of the Kafir farm servants rose upon the still evening atmosphere. What is there about that marvellous African sunset glow? I have seen it many a time since, under far different conditions—under the steamy heat of the lower Zambesi region, and amid piercing cold with many degrees of frost on the high Karoo; in the light dry air of the Kalahari, and in the languorous, semi-tropical richness of beautiful Natal; but never quite as I saw it that evening, standing beside Beryl Matterson. It was as a scene cut out of Eden, that wondrous changing glow which rested upon the whole valley, playing upon the rolling sea of foliage like the sweep of golden waves, striking the iron face of a noble cliff with a glint of bronze, then dying, to leave a pearly atmosphere redolent of distilling aromatic herbs, tuneful with the cooing of myriad doves and the whistle of plover and the hum of strange winged insects coming forth on their nightly quests.“Let’s see. How long is it since you and Brian saw each other last, Mr Holt?” said my companion as we strolled between high quince hedges.“Why, it must have been quite twelve years, rather over than under. And most of the time has not been good, as far as I was concerned. The financial crash that forced me to leave school when I did, kept me for years in a state of sedentary drudgery for a pittance. Something was saved out of the wreck at last, but by that time I had grown ‘groovy’ and fought shy of launching out into anything that involved risk. I preferred to keep my poor little one talent in a napkin, to the possibility of losing it in the process of turning it into two.”She looked interested as she listened. The face which I had thought hard grew soft, sympathetic, and wholly alluring.“There’s a good deal in that,” she laughed. “I must say I have often thought the poor one-talent man was rather hardly used. By the way, when Brian was sent to England to school it was with the idea of making a lawyer or a doctor of him, but he would come back to the farm. It was rather a sore point with our father for quite a long time after, but now he recognises that it is all for the best. My father is not what the insurance people call a ‘good’ life, Mr Holt.”“I’m very sorry to hear that. What is wrong? Heart?”“Yes. But I am boring you with all these family details, but having been Brian’s school chum seems to make you almost as one of ourselves.”“Pray rid yourself of the impression that you are boring me, Miss Matterson—on the contrary, I am flattered. But I must not obtain your good opinion under false pretences. The fact is, Brian and I were not exactly school chums. There was too much difference between our ages—at that time, of course; which makes it all the more friendly and kind of him to have brought me here now.”“Oh, that doesn’t make any difference. If you weren’t chums then you will be now, so it’s all the same.”Then we talked about other things, and to my inquiries relating to this new land—new to me, that is—Beryl gave ready reply.“You will have to return the favour, Mr Holt,” she said with a smile. “There are many things I shall ask you about by-and-by. After all, this sort of life is a good deal outside the world, and I have never been to England, you know. I am only a raw Colonial.”I forget what answer I made; probably it was an idiotic one. But the idea of associating “rawness” with this well-bred, self-possessed, attractive girl at my side, seemed so outrageous that in all probability I overdid the thing in striving to demonstrate its absurdity.On regaining the house we found Brian, who had just returned from counting in the flocks. He was not alone. Two Kafirs—tall, finely-built savages, their blankets and persons coloured terra-cotta red with ochre—stood at the steps of the stoep conversing with him, the mellow bass of their sonorous language and their far from ungraceful appearance and attitude lending another picturesque element to the rich unfamiliarity of the surroundings. They, however, were just taking their leave, bestowing upon us a quick, inquisitive glance, and a farewell salutation as they turned away.“Two more of Kuliso’s wandering lambs, Beryl,” said Brian, with a significant laugh, as we joined him. “Yet none of ours, or sheep either, have vanished this time, so I suppose we ought to consider ourselves fortunate. The count is correct. By the way, Holt, I’m afraid one of the vicissitudes common to this country has deferred supper for a little. We can’t do better than sit out here, so long.”There were cosy cane chairs upon the stoep, and as we sat chatting I said—“Who is Kuliso?”Brian laughed.“One of the chiefs of the Ndhlambe location just east of us. A bad egg personally, and his clan is made up of ‘prize’ thieves and stock-lifters.”“But you, Miss Matterson,” I went on. “Is it safe for you to go about alone among such neighbours?”A glance of understanding, humorous withal, passed between brother and sister.“Beryl is just about a dead shot, Holt,” said the former quietly.“But even then, what can one do against a number, and that one a—”“A woman, you were going to say, Mr Holt,” supplied that equable, resolute voice, that had already begun to charm me.“Ha, ha!” laughed Brian. “Are you afraid to throw up your hat in the air, Holt, now, just as we sit? But never mind. It wouldn’t be fair to spoil that new ‘smasher’ of yours. Mine’s a very old one. Look now.”While he had spoken Beryl had disappeared within the house for a moment. Now she stood there holding a revolver—no toy, mind, but a real effective and business-like six-shooter. Up went Brian’s hat, whirling in mid-air. Just as it rested stationary for a fraction of a second at its highest flight, there was a sharp report; the hat gave a spasmodic jerk, like a live thing, and began to fall. But before it touched ground there was another report. Struck again, it gave a leap, and went skimming away to the ground in sidelong flight.“Magnificent, by Jove!” broke from me. But that she had lowered the still smoking weapon, Beryl had not moved. Brian, however, had sprung from his seat to retrieve his hat.“Call that nothing, Holt?” he cried, pointing out two clean bullet holes—one through the brim, the other through the crown. “Good thing it wasn’t yours, eh?”“Yes, indeed.”“Brian, it’s too bad of you, to make me show off in that way,” said Beryl. “I can’t think why I did it. Now I must go and see to things inside, or you two poor hungry creatures will get nothing to eat to-night.”She disappeared, and as the playful, chiding tone, the merrily deprecatory glance remained in my mind, I realised a strange impression. It seemed that all in a moment she had thrown aside that outer crust of reserve which she had worn for my benefit, and underneath I descried the real Beryl Matterson. And into a very sweet and alluring personality did my mental gaze seem to penetrate.“Bushbuck chops, Holt,” said Brian, as we sat down to supper, in the snug, well-lighted dining-room, which in the comfort and refinement of its appointments bore token of the hand of a presiding genius—to wit, Beryl. “Rather out of season, buck, just now; still, we shoot one now and then, if only as a change from the eternal sheep. Try them. New kind of grub for you, eh?”I did try them, and found them perfect, as indeed everything on the table was, and this was a farm on the average scale. I have since been at many a similar place run on a large scale where the appointments were slovenly in comparison. But then such did not own Beryl Matterson as a presiding goddess. Afterwards we adjourned to the stoep.“Beryl will join us directly, Holt,” said Brian, as we lit our pipes. “She has to see to things a bit first. Girls over here have to do that, you know. I can tell you we should come off badly if they didn’t.”Later on, when I got to my room at the end of the stoep, and turned in between snowy sheets, I appreciated what some of the aforesaid “seeing to things” on Beryl’s part involved.“I expect the governor and George’ll sleep at Trask’s to-night, and turn up first thing in the morning,” declared Brian as it waxed late. And Beryl, who had long since joined us, concurred.It was wholly delightful as we sat there chatting, in the soft night air—the range of hills opposite silvered and beautiful in the moonlight, and ever and anon the strange cry of bird or beast floating through the stillness, or the wailing whistle of plover circling above—and to me the experience was as strange as it was delightful. A day or two ago, I had felt lonely and forlorn indeed—a stranger in a strange land. Yet now here I was, in the most congenial surroundings beneath a hospitable roof whose inmates looked upon me as one of themselves and had made me thoroughly at home accordingly. And the fact that one of the said inmates was an unusually attractive girl did not, you may be sure, under the circumstances tend to lessen the feeling of thorough and comfortable enjoyment to which the situation caused me to give myself up. At last Brian began to yawn.“Holt, old chap, you must excuse me,” he said. “We turn out early here and have to turn in tolerably ditto.”I professed myself quite in accord with the idea. The fact was I felt just a little tired myself.“So? Well, then, we’ll have a glass of grog and turn in.”If I have dwelt upon the incidents of that first evening, I suppose it is because upon such one’s first and most vivid impressions are invariably based.

He reined up the Cape cart at the gate of a picturesque verandah-fronted house which stood against a background of wild and romantic bush scenery. Not for this, however, had I any eyes at that moment; only for the personality which was framed as it were within a profusion of white cactus blossoms which overhung the garden gate.

“Well, Beryl!” he sang out, as we got out of the trap. “Here’s an old school chum I picked up by the merest fluke down at East London. I brought him out here to see a little African life, so for the present I’ll hand him over to you. Give him a cool chair on the stoep, and a ditto drink, while I go and see to the outspanning, and to things in general. Dad still away, I suppose?”

“Yes. He’ll be back this evening, though. I’m expecting him every minute.”

“So long, then.”

Now I have already explained that I am by nature a reticent animal, and may add that I have a sneaking horror of being taken for a susceptible one. Wherefore I had refrained from questioning Brian on the way hither, as to the outward appearance or inner characteristics of his elder sister, and he, while mentioning the fact that he had another sister, who kept house for them—for their mother was long since dead—and a younger brother, had not entered into details.

But it would be idle to pretend I had not been indulging, and that mightily, in all sorts of speculation upon the subject, and that within my own mind. Would she resemble the little one to whose aid I had come—prove a grown-up replica of her? If so, she would be something to look at, I concluded. Yet, now that I beheld her, my first impression of Beryl Matterson was a strange mingling of interest and disappointment. Tall and very graceful of carriage, she stood there, with outstretched hand of welcome. The tint of the smooth skin was that of a dark woman, yet she had eyes of a rich violet blue—large, deep, thoughtful—and her abundant brown hair was drawn back in a wavy ripple from the temples.

But that her glance, so straight and scrutinising as it met mine, became melting and tender as it rested upon her brother, I should have set her down as of a cold disposition, and withal a trifle too resolute for a woman, especially for one of her age. As it was, I hardly knew what to think. She did not greatly resemble Brian, who though also tall and handsome was very dark; yet I suspected his to be the gentler disposition of the two.

“You are very welcome, Mr Holt,” she said. “How strange that Brian should have met you down there.”

“It was not only strange but providential, for I was literally a shipwrecked mariner thrown up on your shore without a dry stitch on me.”

And I told her briefly the plight I had found myself in, when Brian had come to the rescue. She listened with great interest.

“Well, I am more than ever glad he did. But what an experience! The landing one, though, I have been through myself; the bar at East London can be too terrific for words. By the way, we have a little sister staying down there now with some friends. We thought the sea-bathing would do her good, and she’s so fond of it. Did you see her, perhaps?”

“Yes. She met us outside the town to say good-bye. What a pretty child she is.”

“She is, and nicely she gets spoiled on the strength of it,” laughed Beryl, but the laugh was wholly a pleasant one, without a tinge of envy or resentment in it.

We chatted a little, and then she proposed we should stroll out and look at the garden and some tiny ostrich chicks she was trying to rear, and flinging on a large rough straw hat which was infinitely becoming, she led the way, down through an avenue of fig trees, and opened a light gate in the high quince hedge.

Then as I stood within the coolness of the garden, which covered some acreage of the side of the slope, I gained a most wonderful impression of the place that was destined to prove my home for a long time to come, and in whose joys and sorrows—yes, and impending tragedies of dark vendetta and bloodshed—I was fated to be associated. Below the house lay the sheep kraals, and already a woolly cataract was streaming into one of the thorn-protected enclosures, while another awaited its turn at a little distance off. The cattle kraal, too, was alive with dappled hides, and one unintermittent “moo” of restless and hungry calves, while a blue curling smoke reek from the huts of the Kafir farm servants rose upon the still evening atmosphere. What is there about that marvellous African sunset glow? I have seen it many a time since, under far different conditions—under the steamy heat of the lower Zambesi region, and amid piercing cold with many degrees of frost on the high Karoo; in the light dry air of the Kalahari, and in the languorous, semi-tropical richness of beautiful Natal; but never quite as I saw it that evening, standing beside Beryl Matterson. It was as a scene cut out of Eden, that wondrous changing glow which rested upon the whole valley, playing upon the rolling sea of foliage like the sweep of golden waves, striking the iron face of a noble cliff with a glint of bronze, then dying, to leave a pearly atmosphere redolent of distilling aromatic herbs, tuneful with the cooing of myriad doves and the whistle of plover and the hum of strange winged insects coming forth on their nightly quests.

“Let’s see. How long is it since you and Brian saw each other last, Mr Holt?” said my companion as we strolled between high quince hedges.

“Why, it must have been quite twelve years, rather over than under. And most of the time has not been good, as far as I was concerned. The financial crash that forced me to leave school when I did, kept me for years in a state of sedentary drudgery for a pittance. Something was saved out of the wreck at last, but by that time I had grown ‘groovy’ and fought shy of launching out into anything that involved risk. I preferred to keep my poor little one talent in a napkin, to the possibility of losing it in the process of turning it into two.”

She looked interested as she listened. The face which I had thought hard grew soft, sympathetic, and wholly alluring.

“There’s a good deal in that,” she laughed. “I must say I have often thought the poor one-talent man was rather hardly used. By the way, when Brian was sent to England to school it was with the idea of making a lawyer or a doctor of him, but he would come back to the farm. It was rather a sore point with our father for quite a long time after, but now he recognises that it is all for the best. My father is not what the insurance people call a ‘good’ life, Mr Holt.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that. What is wrong? Heart?”

“Yes. But I am boring you with all these family details, but having been Brian’s school chum seems to make you almost as one of ourselves.”

“Pray rid yourself of the impression that you are boring me, Miss Matterson—on the contrary, I am flattered. But I must not obtain your good opinion under false pretences. The fact is, Brian and I were not exactly school chums. There was too much difference between our ages—at that time, of course; which makes it all the more friendly and kind of him to have brought me here now.”

“Oh, that doesn’t make any difference. If you weren’t chums then you will be now, so it’s all the same.”

Then we talked about other things, and to my inquiries relating to this new land—new to me, that is—Beryl gave ready reply.

“You will have to return the favour, Mr Holt,” she said with a smile. “There are many things I shall ask you about by-and-by. After all, this sort of life is a good deal outside the world, and I have never been to England, you know. I am only a raw Colonial.”

I forget what answer I made; probably it was an idiotic one. But the idea of associating “rawness” with this well-bred, self-possessed, attractive girl at my side, seemed so outrageous that in all probability I overdid the thing in striving to demonstrate its absurdity.

On regaining the house we found Brian, who had just returned from counting in the flocks. He was not alone. Two Kafirs—tall, finely-built savages, their blankets and persons coloured terra-cotta red with ochre—stood at the steps of the stoep conversing with him, the mellow bass of their sonorous language and their far from ungraceful appearance and attitude lending another picturesque element to the rich unfamiliarity of the surroundings. They, however, were just taking their leave, bestowing upon us a quick, inquisitive glance, and a farewell salutation as they turned away.

“Two more of Kuliso’s wandering lambs, Beryl,” said Brian, with a significant laugh, as we joined him. “Yet none of ours, or sheep either, have vanished this time, so I suppose we ought to consider ourselves fortunate. The count is correct. By the way, Holt, I’m afraid one of the vicissitudes common to this country has deferred supper for a little. We can’t do better than sit out here, so long.”

There were cosy cane chairs upon the stoep, and as we sat chatting I said—

“Who is Kuliso?”

Brian laughed.

“One of the chiefs of the Ndhlambe location just east of us. A bad egg personally, and his clan is made up of ‘prize’ thieves and stock-lifters.”

“But you, Miss Matterson,” I went on. “Is it safe for you to go about alone among such neighbours?”

A glance of understanding, humorous withal, passed between brother and sister.

“Beryl is just about a dead shot, Holt,” said the former quietly.

“But even then, what can one do against a number, and that one a—”

“A woman, you were going to say, Mr Holt,” supplied that equable, resolute voice, that had already begun to charm me.

“Ha, ha!” laughed Brian. “Are you afraid to throw up your hat in the air, Holt, now, just as we sit? But never mind. It wouldn’t be fair to spoil that new ‘smasher’ of yours. Mine’s a very old one. Look now.”

While he had spoken Beryl had disappeared within the house for a moment. Now she stood there holding a revolver—no toy, mind, but a real effective and business-like six-shooter. Up went Brian’s hat, whirling in mid-air. Just as it rested stationary for a fraction of a second at its highest flight, there was a sharp report; the hat gave a spasmodic jerk, like a live thing, and began to fall. But before it touched ground there was another report. Struck again, it gave a leap, and went skimming away to the ground in sidelong flight.

“Magnificent, by Jove!” broke from me. But that she had lowered the still smoking weapon, Beryl had not moved. Brian, however, had sprung from his seat to retrieve his hat.

“Call that nothing, Holt?” he cried, pointing out two clean bullet holes—one through the brim, the other through the crown. “Good thing it wasn’t yours, eh?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Brian, it’s too bad of you, to make me show off in that way,” said Beryl. “I can’t think why I did it. Now I must go and see to things inside, or you two poor hungry creatures will get nothing to eat to-night.”

She disappeared, and as the playful, chiding tone, the merrily deprecatory glance remained in my mind, I realised a strange impression. It seemed that all in a moment she had thrown aside that outer crust of reserve which she had worn for my benefit, and underneath I descried the real Beryl Matterson. And into a very sweet and alluring personality did my mental gaze seem to penetrate.

“Bushbuck chops, Holt,” said Brian, as we sat down to supper, in the snug, well-lighted dining-room, which in the comfort and refinement of its appointments bore token of the hand of a presiding genius—to wit, Beryl. “Rather out of season, buck, just now; still, we shoot one now and then, if only as a change from the eternal sheep. Try them. New kind of grub for you, eh?”

I did try them, and found them perfect, as indeed everything on the table was, and this was a farm on the average scale. I have since been at many a similar place run on a large scale where the appointments were slovenly in comparison. But then such did not own Beryl Matterson as a presiding goddess. Afterwards we adjourned to the stoep.

“Beryl will join us directly, Holt,” said Brian, as we lit our pipes. “She has to see to things a bit first. Girls over here have to do that, you know. I can tell you we should come off badly if they didn’t.”

Later on, when I got to my room at the end of the stoep, and turned in between snowy sheets, I appreciated what some of the aforesaid “seeing to things” on Beryl’s part involved.

“I expect the governor and George’ll sleep at Trask’s to-night, and turn up first thing in the morning,” declared Brian as it waxed late. And Beryl, who had long since joined us, concurred.

It was wholly delightful as we sat there chatting, in the soft night air—the range of hills opposite silvered and beautiful in the moonlight, and ever and anon the strange cry of bird or beast floating through the stillness, or the wailing whistle of plover circling above—and to me the experience was as strange as it was delightful. A day or two ago, I had felt lonely and forlorn indeed—a stranger in a strange land. Yet now here I was, in the most congenial surroundings beneath a hospitable roof whose inmates looked upon me as one of themselves and had made me thoroughly at home accordingly. And the fact that one of the said inmates was an unusually attractive girl did not, you may be sure, under the circumstances tend to lessen the feeling of thorough and comfortable enjoyment to which the situation caused me to give myself up. At last Brian began to yawn.

“Holt, old chap, you must excuse me,” he said. “We turn out early here and have to turn in tolerably ditto.”

I professed myself quite in accord with the idea. The fact was I felt just a little tired myself.

“So? Well, then, we’ll have a glass of grog and turn in.”

If I have dwelt upon the incidents of that first evening, I suppose it is because upon such one’s first and most vivid impressions are invariably based.

Chapter Eight.A New Life.I awoke from a sound sleep, or rather was awakened by a knocking at the door. Remembering my disclaimer of susceptibility, I hardly like to own the persistency wherewith my dreams were haunted by visions of my hostess. But now the sun was already up, and as I shouted “Come in,” the opening door admitted a broad dazzling flash of his new-born radiance together with the form of a small Kafir girl bearing a cup of coffee. Sounds, too, of busy life came from outside.A shave and a cool refreshing tub, and it did not take me long to get into my clothes. There was no one about the house, except a Kafir girl sweeping the stoep, but I heard voices in the direction of the kraals, and thither wending I came upon a great enclosure filled with cattle, and the hissing squirt of milk into zinc pails told what was going forward. As I climbed over the gate, the voices increased in volume, and expressed anger, not to say menace. Then a sight met my eyes, causing me to move forward a little quicker.Brian Matterson was standing at the further end, and, confronting him, a huge Kafir. The latter was talking volubly in his own tongue, whose rolling bass seemed to convey a ferocity which even to my inexperienced ear was unmistakable. Moreover, he seemed to emphasise his arguments, whatever they, were, with a very suggestive grip upon a pair of hardwood sticks, which he held one in each hand. But Brian, who was totally unarmed, stood, one hand in his trousers pocket, talking quietly, and absolutely and entirely at his ease.Suddenly the savage, an evil-looking, ochre-smeared ruffian, raised his voice to a roar of menace, and at the same time one of the sticks whirled through the air. But Brian merely stepped back a pace, and then what followed was beautiful to behold. His fists were playing like the drumsticks of a kettledrum, and down went his towering assailant into the dust of the cattle kraal—then springing up, down he went again. It was all done in a moment, before I could even reach the spot.“That you, Holt?” said Brian, without, however, taking his eyes off his discomfited adversary, to whom he continued to address some further remarks in the tongue of the Amaxosa, and who, shuffling along the ground, rose to his feet some little way off and slunk away out of the enclosure, snarling out a deep-toned running fire of what sounded not in the least like benediction.“What’s the row?” I said.“Oh, nothing much. Rum thing, though, it should have happened the very first glimpse you get of us. Still, it had to be. That fellow, Sibuko, was with us here once, but we turned him off. He came back this morning, and it’s my belief he came back on purpose to have a row—and he’s got his wish.”“Rather,” I said, in hearty admiration for the masterly way in which my former schoolfellow had reduced to order a formidable and muscular barbarian, an encounter with whom I myself would far rather have avoided than welcomed. “You did that well, Brian. Yet I don’t remember you as a superlative bruiser at old Wankley’s.”“Nor am I now. After all, it’s nothing. These chaps can’t use their fists, you know.”“How about their sticks?”“Yes, that comes in. A smart Kafir with a couple of kerries is often a large contract—quickness is the great thing with either. Still, it’s unpleasant, and I don’t care about it. But you’ll hardly believe me when I tell you the necessity may not arise once in a year. Only, you can’t be defied on your own place. I told that chap to clear, and he answered point-blank that he wouldn’t. There was only one way of settling that difference of opinion, you see.”And he turned to give an order to one of his Kafirs, calm, equable, as if nothing had happened.“Have a smoke,” he went on, “or is it too early for you? Yes? Oh well, perhaps a fellow is better in moderation. Though I expect you’ll soon tumble into all our ways.” And he filled and lighted his pipe, while we chatted, but not for a moment did his attention slacken from what he was engaged upon, the superintending of the milking to wit.It was a lovely cloudless morning, and there was something in the clear dry atmosphere that was exhilarating in the extreme. How would I take to this sort of life? I thought to myself. Already the old life seemed far away, and all behind. The charm of this new life—its freedom and glorious climate—were settling upon me; why should I not embark in it? I had the means, if I started carefully and modestly. I did not imagine for a moment there was a fortune in it, but neither was there in the branch of business in which my lines had hitherto been cast. And somehow, woven in with such meditations was already the image of Beryl Matterson; which was quite too absurd, remembering that twenty-four hours ago I had never seen her.“Don’t you ever carry a six-shooter, Matterson?” I said, my mind reverting to the little difference of opinion I had just seen so effectually settled.“Very seldom. You see, we are not outside the law here, and if I shot a fellow I should almost certainly find myself in a nasty awkward mess.”“What—even in self-defence?”“Even then. The English law is curiously wooden-headed on some points. The ‘sacredness of human life’ is one of them, especially with a judge or two we have here who will always go against a white man in favour of a Kafir; and if you were known to habitually carry arms it would go further against you still.”“But what about your sister?”“That’s different. There isn’t a jury on the frontier would convict a woman for shooting a Kafir, because they know perfectly well that such a thing couldn’t happen except in a case of the direst necessity. In fact, there are far too few women and girls who are able to take care of themselves, and they all ought to be.”“I should very much think so,” I said, and the time was to come when these remarks were destined to recur to my mind with vivid clearness and weighty force.“Hallo!” said Brian, “here’s the governor coming back.” And following his glance, I saw the white tent of a trap coming down the road from the opposite direction to that of our way the evening before. A minute or so more and it drew up opposite the kraals.“Don’t say anything about what you’ve just seen, Holt,” he went on, as we made our way to the gate. “He doesn’t like that sort of thing, but for all that it’s sometimes inevitable.”Of course I gave him the required assurance, and as we reached the gate the buggy pulled up, and there got out a strongly-built man of about fifty-five. He had a quiet-looking but determined face, which reminded me more of Beryl than of Brian, and a thick, full, brown beard, somewhat streaked with grey, and as Brian speedily introduced us his welcome of me was all that could be desired in the way of frank cordiality.“I hope you will be able to make some stay with us, Mr Holt,” he said. “You have spent the night here, and, I take it, have seen what we have to offer you; but such as it is, you are very welcome.”So this was Brian’s father! I confess he inspired in me more than a feeling of cordiality—for it was one of admiration. I knew men pretty well by that time, and was a bit of a cynic on the subject; but now I saw before me one whom I read as rather a unique specimen—a man who would say what he meant, and who would act as his judgment dictated, no matter what the whole world might think—a man whose word would be as his bond, even though it were to his own detriment; in short, in this frontier stock-farmer I saw a man who, no matter where he might be put down, or under what circumstances, would be a very tower of reliability: cool, intrepid, sound of judgment, come good, come ill. And in all my subsequent friendship with Septimus Matterson, I never had cause to swerve one hair’s breadth from my first impression—save in one instance only.Now as two Kafirs came up to stand at the horses’ heads, somebody else jumped out of the buggy—a boy to wit, whom Mr Matterson promptly introduced as his youngest son. He was a boy of about fourteen, a good-looking boy, but with a roving mischievous look in his face; a boy, in short, to whom I did not take one bit. Equally readily I could see that he did not take to me.“Just out from England, hey?” said this hopeful. “Man, but you’ll find it different here.”Now this was hardly the form of address to be looked for from a youngster of his tender age to a man very considerably his senior; moreover, there was something patronising about it which prejudiced me against the speaker; in fact, I set him down at once as an unlicked cub. But of course I showed no sign of what I was thinking, and the work Brian had been superintending being at an end, we all went round to count the flocks—I don’t mean I bore any part in that operation, not then—and adjourned to the house for breakfast.

I awoke from a sound sleep, or rather was awakened by a knocking at the door. Remembering my disclaimer of susceptibility, I hardly like to own the persistency wherewith my dreams were haunted by visions of my hostess. But now the sun was already up, and as I shouted “Come in,” the opening door admitted a broad dazzling flash of his new-born radiance together with the form of a small Kafir girl bearing a cup of coffee. Sounds, too, of busy life came from outside.

A shave and a cool refreshing tub, and it did not take me long to get into my clothes. There was no one about the house, except a Kafir girl sweeping the stoep, but I heard voices in the direction of the kraals, and thither wending I came upon a great enclosure filled with cattle, and the hissing squirt of milk into zinc pails told what was going forward. As I climbed over the gate, the voices increased in volume, and expressed anger, not to say menace. Then a sight met my eyes, causing me to move forward a little quicker.

Brian Matterson was standing at the further end, and, confronting him, a huge Kafir. The latter was talking volubly in his own tongue, whose rolling bass seemed to convey a ferocity which even to my inexperienced ear was unmistakable. Moreover, he seemed to emphasise his arguments, whatever they, were, with a very suggestive grip upon a pair of hardwood sticks, which he held one in each hand. But Brian, who was totally unarmed, stood, one hand in his trousers pocket, talking quietly, and absolutely and entirely at his ease.

Suddenly the savage, an evil-looking, ochre-smeared ruffian, raised his voice to a roar of menace, and at the same time one of the sticks whirled through the air. But Brian merely stepped back a pace, and then what followed was beautiful to behold. His fists were playing like the drumsticks of a kettledrum, and down went his towering assailant into the dust of the cattle kraal—then springing up, down he went again. It was all done in a moment, before I could even reach the spot.

“That you, Holt?” said Brian, without, however, taking his eyes off his discomfited adversary, to whom he continued to address some further remarks in the tongue of the Amaxosa, and who, shuffling along the ground, rose to his feet some little way off and slunk away out of the enclosure, snarling out a deep-toned running fire of what sounded not in the least like benediction.

“What’s the row?” I said.

“Oh, nothing much. Rum thing, though, it should have happened the very first glimpse you get of us. Still, it had to be. That fellow, Sibuko, was with us here once, but we turned him off. He came back this morning, and it’s my belief he came back on purpose to have a row—and he’s got his wish.”

“Rather,” I said, in hearty admiration for the masterly way in which my former schoolfellow had reduced to order a formidable and muscular barbarian, an encounter with whom I myself would far rather have avoided than welcomed. “You did that well, Brian. Yet I don’t remember you as a superlative bruiser at old Wankley’s.”

“Nor am I now. After all, it’s nothing. These chaps can’t use their fists, you know.”

“How about their sticks?”

“Yes, that comes in. A smart Kafir with a couple of kerries is often a large contract—quickness is the great thing with either. Still, it’s unpleasant, and I don’t care about it. But you’ll hardly believe me when I tell you the necessity may not arise once in a year. Only, you can’t be defied on your own place. I told that chap to clear, and he answered point-blank that he wouldn’t. There was only one way of settling that difference of opinion, you see.”

And he turned to give an order to one of his Kafirs, calm, equable, as if nothing had happened.

“Have a smoke,” he went on, “or is it too early for you? Yes? Oh well, perhaps a fellow is better in moderation. Though I expect you’ll soon tumble into all our ways.” And he filled and lighted his pipe, while we chatted, but not for a moment did his attention slacken from what he was engaged upon, the superintending of the milking to wit.

It was a lovely cloudless morning, and there was something in the clear dry atmosphere that was exhilarating in the extreme. How would I take to this sort of life? I thought to myself. Already the old life seemed far away, and all behind. The charm of this new life—its freedom and glorious climate—were settling upon me; why should I not embark in it? I had the means, if I started carefully and modestly. I did not imagine for a moment there was a fortune in it, but neither was there in the branch of business in which my lines had hitherto been cast. And somehow, woven in with such meditations was already the image of Beryl Matterson; which was quite too absurd, remembering that twenty-four hours ago I had never seen her.

“Don’t you ever carry a six-shooter, Matterson?” I said, my mind reverting to the little difference of opinion I had just seen so effectually settled.

“Very seldom. You see, we are not outside the law here, and if I shot a fellow I should almost certainly find myself in a nasty awkward mess.”

“What—even in self-defence?”

“Even then. The English law is curiously wooden-headed on some points. The ‘sacredness of human life’ is one of them, especially with a judge or two we have here who will always go against a white man in favour of a Kafir; and if you were known to habitually carry arms it would go further against you still.”

“But what about your sister?”

“That’s different. There isn’t a jury on the frontier would convict a woman for shooting a Kafir, because they know perfectly well that such a thing couldn’t happen except in a case of the direst necessity. In fact, there are far too few women and girls who are able to take care of themselves, and they all ought to be.”

“I should very much think so,” I said, and the time was to come when these remarks were destined to recur to my mind with vivid clearness and weighty force.

“Hallo!” said Brian, “here’s the governor coming back.” And following his glance, I saw the white tent of a trap coming down the road from the opposite direction to that of our way the evening before. A minute or so more and it drew up opposite the kraals.

“Don’t say anything about what you’ve just seen, Holt,” he went on, as we made our way to the gate. “He doesn’t like that sort of thing, but for all that it’s sometimes inevitable.”

Of course I gave him the required assurance, and as we reached the gate the buggy pulled up, and there got out a strongly-built man of about fifty-five. He had a quiet-looking but determined face, which reminded me more of Beryl than of Brian, and a thick, full, brown beard, somewhat streaked with grey, and as Brian speedily introduced us his welcome of me was all that could be desired in the way of frank cordiality.

“I hope you will be able to make some stay with us, Mr Holt,” he said. “You have spent the night here, and, I take it, have seen what we have to offer you; but such as it is, you are very welcome.”

So this was Brian’s father! I confess he inspired in me more than a feeling of cordiality—for it was one of admiration. I knew men pretty well by that time, and was a bit of a cynic on the subject; but now I saw before me one whom I read as rather a unique specimen—a man who would say what he meant, and who would act as his judgment dictated, no matter what the whole world might think—a man whose word would be as his bond, even though it were to his own detriment; in short, in this frontier stock-farmer I saw a man who, no matter where he might be put down, or under what circumstances, would be a very tower of reliability: cool, intrepid, sound of judgment, come good, come ill. And in all my subsequent friendship with Septimus Matterson, I never had cause to swerve one hair’s breadth from my first impression—save in one instance only.

Now as two Kafirs came up to stand at the horses’ heads, somebody else jumped out of the buggy—a boy to wit, whom Mr Matterson promptly introduced as his youngest son. He was a boy of about fourteen, a good-looking boy, but with a roving mischievous look in his face; a boy, in short, to whom I did not take one bit. Equally readily I could see that he did not take to me.

“Just out from England, hey?” said this hopeful. “Man, but you’ll find it different here.”

Now this was hardly the form of address to be looked for from a youngster of his tender age to a man very considerably his senior; moreover, there was something patronising about it which prejudiced me against the speaker; in fact, I set him down at once as an unlicked cub. But of course I showed no sign of what I was thinking, and the work Brian had been superintending being at an end, we all went round to count the flocks—I don’t mean I bore any part in that operation, not then—and adjourned to the house for breakfast.

Chapter Nine.Mainly Venatorial.Beryl looked wholly fresh and delightful as she welcomed us, and it was hard to believe she had been up nearly three hours “seeing to things,” as Brian put it. There was a good deal of talk, of wholly local interest, with regard to the expeditions of both father and son, and the results thereof, but even it was by no means without interest to me, for, after all, it let me into so much of the inner life of these strange new surroundings. Presently the young hopeful, looking up from a large plateful of oatmeal porridge and milk, observed—“I say, Brian, let’s go down to Zwaart Kloof this morning and try for a bushbuck ram.”“Well, I don’t know. Yes. Perhaps Mr Holt would like to try his luck. What do you say, Holt?”I said I’d like nothing better, but for the trifling drawback that I had no gun—being only a shipwrecked mariner who had come away with nothing but the clothes he stood up in. But this was speedily over-ruled. There were plenty of guns in the house. No difficulty about that.“Can you shoot, Mr Holt?” said the youngster, planting both elbows on the table, and eyeing me with rather disdainful incredulity.“Well, yes, I can shoot,” I said. “Moderately, that is.”“But you’re out from England,” went on the cub, as though that settled the matter.“George, you little ass, shut up, and go and tell them to saddle up Bles and Punch for us,” said Brian. “You can ride Jack.”A volume of expostulation in favour of some other steed having been silenced by Brian in quiet and peremptory fashion, the hopeful went out.“I’m afraid you’ll find George rather a spoilt boy, Mr Holt,” said Beryl. “He and Iris seem to get their own way more than they ought. They are the little ones, you see.”Of course I rejoined that it was quite natural—reserving my own opinion. In the case of the little girl it was candid: in the other—well “boy” to me is apt to spell horror; but a spoilt boy, and just a boy of George Matterson’s age, well—to fit him, my vocabulary has never yet been able to invent an adequate superlative.“You’d better have a shot gun, Holt,” said Brian, as we started. “I always use one in thick bush; it’s all close shooting.”He handed me a double Number Twelve bore, of first-rate make and poise, and kept in first-rate order too, and some treble A cartridges.“You won’t use all those. You’ll be lucky if you get two fair and square shots,” he remarked.“Good luck, Mr Holt,” called out Beryl after us.I began to feel nervous. I was only an ordinary shot, and of this form of sport was, of course, utterly without experience—and said as much.“You only shoot tame pheasants in England, don’t you, Mr Holt?” said George, in a tone that made me wish I could turn him into one of the fowl aforesaid. Could it really be that this impudent young pup was Beryl’s brother—or Brian’s too, for the matter of that?We cantered down the valley, then struck up a lateral spur, and rounding it came upon a deep kloof running far up into the hillside—its side black with dense bush, theboerboenand plumed euphorbia, and half a dozen other varieties whose names I didn’t know then.“Here, Tiger, Ratels, get to heel!” cried Brian, apostrophising the rough-haired dogs which had followed, all excited, at our horses’ heels. “George, take Mr Holt on to the opening above the little krantz. You know where to post him. If he doesn’t get a shot there he won’t get one anywhere. Then come back to me.”We made a bit of a circuit, and some twenty minutes later found ourselves in a little open space, surrounded on three sides by dense bush, while the fourth seemed to be the brink of a precipitous fall in the ground. Here I was carefully posted in the combined cover of an ant-heap and a small mimosa.“That’s where they always break cover,” whispered George. “Man, but you mustn’t make a sound. Don’t move—don’t cough, even. So long.”Left alone, my nerves were all athrill with excitement, and I believe my hand shook. A couple of spreuws perched upon an adjoining bush, melodiously whistling, then, become mysteriously aware of my presence, flashed off—a pair of green-blue streaks, their note changed to one of alarm. Would they scare the game and turn it back? I thought agonisingly. Heavens! what if I should shoot badly, and miss? What a fool I should look—and this was, in a way, mydébut!The space the quarry would have to cross was about twenty yards. Could I stop it in that distance? No, I was sure I could not. I was feeling far too shaky, far too eager—a nervous condition invariably fatal, at any rate in my own case, to effective execution.The silence settled down around me, broken only by the occasional note of a bird. Then I started. What was that? The yapping of a dog, then another, then a chorus of excited yelps; and as it drew rapidly nearer I realised that they were on the track of something.Exactly from the direction George had indicated, it came—a quick bounding rush. A noble antelope leapt out into the open. Its pointed, slightly spiral horns and dilated eye, the almost black hide with the white belly stripe, seemed photographed in my brain as I pressed the trigger, and—missed. Like a streak of dark lightning it shot across the open, and my left barrel spoke, a fraction of a second before it disappeared over the declivity. But in that fraction of a second I had seen the convulsive start, the unmistakable squirm, and could have hurrahed aloud.I remained still, however, slipping in a couple of fresh cartridges. Another might come out. But it did not; instead, the dogs appeared hot foot on the scent, and close behind them George.“Hallo, Mr Holt. Where’s the buck?” cried that youth, with a derisive grin. “Man, but we drove him right over you.”“And I’ve driven him right over there,” pointing to the brow of the declivity.“So it seems. Man! but you won’t get such a chance again in a hurry.”“Well, Holt? No luck, eh?” said Brian, appearing on the scene.“Well, it depends on whether you look at it from my point of view or the buck’s,” I said with designed coolness. “If the latter, you’re right.”“Eh? Why—”Something of a clamour beneath interrupted him: the fierce worrying of dogs, and the half bellow, half scream, of a bush-buck ram in the last fight for his life. We did not pause a moment then. Flinging themselves from their horses—mine had been left much higher up—they plunged down, I following, leaping from rock to rock. There lay my quarry, unable to rise save on his forelegs, yet savagely menacing with his pointed horns the three dogs which were leaping and snarling frantically around him.“He’s done for—hit rather far back, though,” said Brian, calling off the dogs. “Put another shot into him, Holt—forward this time.”I did, and the animal at once stiffened out, lifeless.“Maagtig! but he’s a fine ram,” cried George, while congenially amusing himself by cutting the beast’s throat. “You didn’t hit him by accident, Mr Holt, hey?”“Bad accident for the buck, anyway,” said Brian with a dry laugh. “Well done, Holt. I congratulate you. Thirteen-inch horns! We’ll have them done up for you as a trophy of your first bushbuck.”I was secretly not a little pleased with myself, as the buck, having been cleaned, was loaded up behind my saddle, and we took our way homewards, for Brian declared that we might be all day and not get anything like so good a chance again, without beaters and with only three dogs. Moreover, it was rather out of season, and they had come out solely on my account. I, however, was amply content; indeed, I sneakingly thought it just as well not to spoil the effect of my first prowess by potential and subsequent misses.Yes, I felt decidedly satisfied with myself and at peace with all the world, as we drew near the homestead an hour or so later, with my quarry strapped behind my saddle. I heeded not—was rather proud, in fact—of the widening patch of gore which the movement of the horse caused to gather upon my trouser leg during our progress. The “fellow just out from home,” the “raw Britisher,” had vindicated himself. Even that young rascal George seemed to treat me with a shade of newly-fledged respect, and the very intonations in the voices of a couple of Kaffirs hanging around, as we rode up, were intelligible to me as witnessing to my prowess. Beryl and her father, who were sitting on the stoep when we arrived, came out to meet us.“Well done, Mr Holt!” said the former. “I’m so glad you’ve had some luck.”“I think it was due to your last aspiration, Miss Matterson,” I answered, feeling with a satisfaction wholly uncalled for by the occasion that somehow or other I had gone up in her estimation.“Got him just above the krantz in the Zwaart Kloof, did you?” commented her father. “That’s the place where you’ll nearly always get a chance. I suppose this is your first experience of this kind of sport; but I can tell you there’s many a man, not a bad shot either, who doesn’t fall into it just so soon. George, take the horses round—let’s see, keep Bles up though, I may want him later. And now we’ll go in to dinner.”Throughout that welcome repast I was plying my host eagerly with questions as to the conditions of colonial life, and the vagaries of stock-farming in general; and wondering what a long while ago it seemed since I started for that fateful row at Whiddlecombe Regis, an unconscious voyage of discovery which should terminate in this.“There are a sight too many Kafirs near us,” he said, in answer to one of my questions. “That’s the great drawback. They take too much toll of our stock, and besides, they have been getting restless lately. Some people set up a periodical scare, but I don’t believe in that sort of thing. As they are here we must rub along with them as best we can, and I must say they bother me less than they do—or seem to do—some others. But you never know what to expect with savages.”“I suppose not,” I answered, thinking of the tussle I had witnessed that morning, and remembering the malignant and vengeful looks of the defeated barbarian as he slunk out by the cattle kraal. “But couldn’t they render the position—well, rather impossible for you, here, for instance, if they were to combine.”“That’s just it—they can’t combine. But if you know how to take them, and not expect to find angels under a red blanket and a daub ofroot klip, you can pull with them as well as with anybody else. Only you must never for a moment let them imagine you’re afraid of them.”I little thought then how near was the time when I should witness Septimus Matterson’s theory tested—and that severely. Yet that was to come, and it was only the beginning of a series of stirring events calling for readiness of resource and cool judgment and iron courage. The sun was shining now, the sky unclouded. Yet was the storm behind, gathering afar.

Beryl looked wholly fresh and delightful as she welcomed us, and it was hard to believe she had been up nearly three hours “seeing to things,” as Brian put it. There was a good deal of talk, of wholly local interest, with regard to the expeditions of both father and son, and the results thereof, but even it was by no means without interest to me, for, after all, it let me into so much of the inner life of these strange new surroundings. Presently the young hopeful, looking up from a large plateful of oatmeal porridge and milk, observed—

“I say, Brian, let’s go down to Zwaart Kloof this morning and try for a bushbuck ram.”

“Well, I don’t know. Yes. Perhaps Mr Holt would like to try his luck. What do you say, Holt?”

I said I’d like nothing better, but for the trifling drawback that I had no gun—being only a shipwrecked mariner who had come away with nothing but the clothes he stood up in. But this was speedily over-ruled. There were plenty of guns in the house. No difficulty about that.

“Can you shoot, Mr Holt?” said the youngster, planting both elbows on the table, and eyeing me with rather disdainful incredulity.

“Well, yes, I can shoot,” I said. “Moderately, that is.”

“But you’re out from England,” went on the cub, as though that settled the matter.

“George, you little ass, shut up, and go and tell them to saddle up Bles and Punch for us,” said Brian. “You can ride Jack.”

A volume of expostulation in favour of some other steed having been silenced by Brian in quiet and peremptory fashion, the hopeful went out.

“I’m afraid you’ll find George rather a spoilt boy, Mr Holt,” said Beryl. “He and Iris seem to get their own way more than they ought. They are the little ones, you see.”

Of course I rejoined that it was quite natural—reserving my own opinion. In the case of the little girl it was candid: in the other—well “boy” to me is apt to spell horror; but a spoilt boy, and just a boy of George Matterson’s age, well—to fit him, my vocabulary has never yet been able to invent an adequate superlative.

“You’d better have a shot gun, Holt,” said Brian, as we started. “I always use one in thick bush; it’s all close shooting.”

He handed me a double Number Twelve bore, of first-rate make and poise, and kept in first-rate order too, and some treble A cartridges.

“You won’t use all those. You’ll be lucky if you get two fair and square shots,” he remarked.

“Good luck, Mr Holt,” called out Beryl after us.

I began to feel nervous. I was only an ordinary shot, and of this form of sport was, of course, utterly without experience—and said as much.

“You only shoot tame pheasants in England, don’t you, Mr Holt?” said George, in a tone that made me wish I could turn him into one of the fowl aforesaid. Could it really be that this impudent young pup was Beryl’s brother—or Brian’s too, for the matter of that?

We cantered down the valley, then struck up a lateral spur, and rounding it came upon a deep kloof running far up into the hillside—its side black with dense bush, theboerboenand plumed euphorbia, and half a dozen other varieties whose names I didn’t know then.

“Here, Tiger, Ratels, get to heel!” cried Brian, apostrophising the rough-haired dogs which had followed, all excited, at our horses’ heels. “George, take Mr Holt on to the opening above the little krantz. You know where to post him. If he doesn’t get a shot there he won’t get one anywhere. Then come back to me.”

We made a bit of a circuit, and some twenty minutes later found ourselves in a little open space, surrounded on three sides by dense bush, while the fourth seemed to be the brink of a precipitous fall in the ground. Here I was carefully posted in the combined cover of an ant-heap and a small mimosa.

“That’s where they always break cover,” whispered George. “Man, but you mustn’t make a sound. Don’t move—don’t cough, even. So long.”

Left alone, my nerves were all athrill with excitement, and I believe my hand shook. A couple of spreuws perched upon an adjoining bush, melodiously whistling, then, become mysteriously aware of my presence, flashed off—a pair of green-blue streaks, their note changed to one of alarm. Would they scare the game and turn it back? I thought agonisingly. Heavens! what if I should shoot badly, and miss? What a fool I should look—and this was, in a way, mydébut!

The space the quarry would have to cross was about twenty yards. Could I stop it in that distance? No, I was sure I could not. I was feeling far too shaky, far too eager—a nervous condition invariably fatal, at any rate in my own case, to effective execution.

The silence settled down around me, broken only by the occasional note of a bird. Then I started. What was that? The yapping of a dog, then another, then a chorus of excited yelps; and as it drew rapidly nearer I realised that they were on the track of something.

Exactly from the direction George had indicated, it came—a quick bounding rush. A noble antelope leapt out into the open. Its pointed, slightly spiral horns and dilated eye, the almost black hide with the white belly stripe, seemed photographed in my brain as I pressed the trigger, and—missed. Like a streak of dark lightning it shot across the open, and my left barrel spoke, a fraction of a second before it disappeared over the declivity. But in that fraction of a second I had seen the convulsive start, the unmistakable squirm, and could have hurrahed aloud.

I remained still, however, slipping in a couple of fresh cartridges. Another might come out. But it did not; instead, the dogs appeared hot foot on the scent, and close behind them George.

“Hallo, Mr Holt. Where’s the buck?” cried that youth, with a derisive grin. “Man, but we drove him right over you.”

“And I’ve driven him right over there,” pointing to the brow of the declivity.

“So it seems. Man! but you won’t get such a chance again in a hurry.”

“Well, Holt? No luck, eh?” said Brian, appearing on the scene.

“Well, it depends on whether you look at it from my point of view or the buck’s,” I said with designed coolness. “If the latter, you’re right.”

“Eh? Why—”

Something of a clamour beneath interrupted him: the fierce worrying of dogs, and the half bellow, half scream, of a bush-buck ram in the last fight for his life. We did not pause a moment then. Flinging themselves from their horses—mine had been left much higher up—they plunged down, I following, leaping from rock to rock. There lay my quarry, unable to rise save on his forelegs, yet savagely menacing with his pointed horns the three dogs which were leaping and snarling frantically around him.

“He’s done for—hit rather far back, though,” said Brian, calling off the dogs. “Put another shot into him, Holt—forward this time.”

I did, and the animal at once stiffened out, lifeless.

“Maagtig! but he’s a fine ram,” cried George, while congenially amusing himself by cutting the beast’s throat. “You didn’t hit him by accident, Mr Holt, hey?”

“Bad accident for the buck, anyway,” said Brian with a dry laugh. “Well done, Holt. I congratulate you. Thirteen-inch horns! We’ll have them done up for you as a trophy of your first bushbuck.”

I was secretly not a little pleased with myself, as the buck, having been cleaned, was loaded up behind my saddle, and we took our way homewards, for Brian declared that we might be all day and not get anything like so good a chance again, without beaters and with only three dogs. Moreover, it was rather out of season, and they had come out solely on my account. I, however, was amply content; indeed, I sneakingly thought it just as well not to spoil the effect of my first prowess by potential and subsequent misses.

Yes, I felt decidedly satisfied with myself and at peace with all the world, as we drew near the homestead an hour or so later, with my quarry strapped behind my saddle. I heeded not—was rather proud, in fact—of the widening patch of gore which the movement of the horse caused to gather upon my trouser leg during our progress. The “fellow just out from home,” the “raw Britisher,” had vindicated himself. Even that young rascal George seemed to treat me with a shade of newly-fledged respect, and the very intonations in the voices of a couple of Kaffirs hanging around, as we rode up, were intelligible to me as witnessing to my prowess. Beryl and her father, who were sitting on the stoep when we arrived, came out to meet us.

“Well done, Mr Holt!” said the former. “I’m so glad you’ve had some luck.”

“I think it was due to your last aspiration, Miss Matterson,” I answered, feeling with a satisfaction wholly uncalled for by the occasion that somehow or other I had gone up in her estimation.

“Got him just above the krantz in the Zwaart Kloof, did you?” commented her father. “That’s the place where you’ll nearly always get a chance. I suppose this is your first experience of this kind of sport; but I can tell you there’s many a man, not a bad shot either, who doesn’t fall into it just so soon. George, take the horses round—let’s see, keep Bles up though, I may want him later. And now we’ll go in to dinner.”

Throughout that welcome repast I was plying my host eagerly with questions as to the conditions of colonial life, and the vagaries of stock-farming in general; and wondering what a long while ago it seemed since I started for that fateful row at Whiddlecombe Regis, an unconscious voyage of discovery which should terminate in this.

“There are a sight too many Kafirs near us,” he said, in answer to one of my questions. “That’s the great drawback. They take too much toll of our stock, and besides, they have been getting restless lately. Some people set up a periodical scare, but I don’t believe in that sort of thing. As they are here we must rub along with them as best we can, and I must say they bother me less than they do—or seem to do—some others. But you never know what to expect with savages.”

“I suppose not,” I answered, thinking of the tussle I had witnessed that morning, and remembering the malignant and vengeful looks of the defeated barbarian as he slunk out by the cattle kraal. “But couldn’t they render the position—well, rather impossible for you, here, for instance, if they were to combine.”

“That’s just it—they can’t combine. But if you know how to take them, and not expect to find angels under a red blanket and a daub ofroot klip, you can pull with them as well as with anybody else. Only you must never for a moment let them imagine you’re afraid of them.”

I little thought then how near was the time when I should witness Septimus Matterson’s theory tested—and that severely. Yet that was to come, and it was only the beginning of a series of stirring events calling for readiness of resource and cool judgment and iron courage. The sun was shining now, the sky unclouded. Yet was the storm behind, gathering afar.

Back to IndexNext