Chapter Three.A Desert Mystery.One of the cheeriest of Christmas Days was that spent on the pleasant banks of the Limpopo River, not many years since. Two hunting friends were trekking through Bechuanaland towards the Zambesi, and it happened by great good fortune that, just at the junction of the Notwani and Limpopo Rivers, they found outspanned the wagons of two hunters and traders southward bound from the far interior. These men were travelling down-country with heavy loads of ivory, ostrich feathers, skins, and other produce, and they had with them a big troop of cattle obtained in barter. In these fitful encounters in the African wilderness men are always well met, and it needed no pressing from the new-found acquaintances to induce them to outspan together, and combine forces for Christmas cheer and Christmas chatter. A brief council of war soon settled the all-important question of commissariat. Smallfield, the younger of the traders, had shot a good rooibok the evening before, which furnished venison for all, and they had already baked a store of bread from fresh Boer meal. The new-comers, on their side, freshly equipped from Kimberley, could provide tinned plum-puddings, tinned tomatoes, peas, jams, and other luxuries, including dried onions, most precious of vegetables in the veldt; and they had further some excellent Scotch whisky. They had, besides, half a dozen brace of guinea-fowl and pheasants, shot during the day in the jungles bordering the river, so that all the concomitants of a capital African banquet were ready to hand.Just at sundown the preparations were complete, and no merrier party, you may swear, ever sat down to their Christmas meal. They supped by the light of a roaring camp-fire, eked out by a lantern or two placed on the cases that served for tables. The servants were enjoying themselves at another fire at a little distance; the oxen lay peacefully at their yokes; the wagons loomed large alongside, their white tents reflecting cheerfully the ruddy blaze of the fire; the night was perfect, still and warm, and the stars, like a million diamond sparks, scintillated in the intense darkness of the dome above. What wonder, then, that all felt happy and contented?Supper at length over, the coffee-kettle was banished to obscurity and the whisky produced. The travellers lit their pipes and toasted their absent friends and each other, and then ensued a long and delightful evening.The traders were two capital, manly fellows, well versed in the sports and toils and pleasures of the far interior; the new-comers themselves had been in the hunting veldt before, and they had all, therefore, many things in common. Many and many a yarn of the chase and adventure they exchanged; many a head of gallant game they slew again by the cheerful blaze. The up-country trekkers mentioned that they thought of trying a new bit of veldt, rather away from the beaten track, if but they could find water in the desert, and good guides and spoorers—they were bent on entering the wild and little-known tract of country north of the road to the Mababi veldt. “Well,” said the elder of the traders—Kenstone was his name—“you’ll find game there after the rains—giraffe, gemsbok, hartebeest, eland, koodoo, roan antelope, and perhaps a few elephant, or a rhinoceros or two. But it’s a wild, barren veldt; the country as you go north is a good deal broken, and, unless the rains have been good, water is terribly scarce there. As for myself,” (gazing rather moodily at the camp-fire, and stroking his thick, brown beard), “I once went into that veldt, and never wish to see it again. I had a most uncanny adventure there—an experience I never again wish to repeat if I live to a hundred. In all the years (and they are close on five-and-twenty now) I have been in the hunting veldt, I never spent so incomprehensible and horrible a time as the few days I am thinking of. Ugh!” and the big man shivered as he spoke.Naturally the curiosity of his audience was at once excited. The younger trader, Smallfield, spoke first.“Why, George,” he said, “I never heard you speak of that country. I never even knew you had been in it. What’s the yarn? It must be something out of the common if it givesyouthe blues. You’re not sentimental, as far as I remember.”“No, Jim,” returned Kenstone, “I never mentioned the thing to you or to any one else, bar, perhaps, two or three folks. It’s eleven years gone since it all happened. My old partner, Angus (he’s down in the Colony now), who was with me at the time, knows all about it, and I reported some of the circumstances to a Transvaal Landdrost when we got back. Otherwise I have never talked about the matter—I should only be chaffed, and it’s not a pleasant topic at the best of times. It gave me a very nastyschrijk(Fright) at the time, I remember. However, it’s all far enough away now; if you and these gentlemen would like to hear the yarn, as it’s Christmas-time, and we’re so well met, why, I’ll break my rule and tell you all about it. And mind, what I tell you are solid facts. You know I don’t ‘blow,’ Jim, or spout tall yarns for the benefit of down-country folks or bar-loafers at Kimberley. What I saw I saw, and, please God, hope never to see again.”All were as keen as mustard for the story, and Kenstone went on.“Well, let me fill my pipe, and give me anothersoupjeof whisky, and,” (nodding a health to his hearers over his glass) “here goes:—“It was in ’74 that Angus and I were making our third trip to the Lake N’gami country. This time we had got leave from Khama to trade and hunt in Mababi and the Chobé River country; and we meant to push even beyond, to the region between the Sunta and the Okavango, if the fever would let us. We made a good trek of it across the ‘thirst’—there had been very late rains that year—and even after crossing the Lake River we made good travelling well on towards the Mababi flat. We heard from the Makobas and Masarwas along the river that there was still some water standing in the bush on our right hand, that there were elephant in there, and that other game was abundant. It is not often that this veldt is accessible—from scarcity of water—and it seemed good enough to quit the wagon road for a time, and try the bush for ivory. Before reaching Scio Pans, therefore, we turned right-handed, and struck into the bush with one wagon—the other, in charge of our head driver, being sent on to the water, there to await our coming.“We had some Masarwa bushmen with us, and they were as keen as hawks at the prospect of showing us heavy game, and getting a liberal supply of flesh. Northward we trekked steadily through wild desolate country for the best part of one day, and outspanned by a desert pool for the night. Here we were greatly disappointed to find no spoor of elephant, although giraffe, ostrich, gemsbok, and hartebeest were fairly plentiful. Next day at dawn we again pushed doggedly on, Angus and I taking different directions, and riding some miles ahead of the wagon on the look-out for elephant-spoor. I rode behind a Masarwa at a steady pace all morning without finding the least sign of the game we wanted, and, after an off-saddle at midday, once more pushed on in a north-westerly direction.“Rather suddenly we came upon aklompjeof giraffe, and as the elephants seemed very much in the air and we wanted meat, I rammed the spurs in and galloped headlong for thekameels(Camels. The Boer term for giraffe). It was desperately hot, and we were shut up in thick thorny bush in which not a breath of wind stirred, and I consequently had not got my coat on. The beast I rode for, a fat, fresh young cow, led me a pretty dance of two miles, hell for leather, at a terrific pace through the very thorniest jungle she could pick; and although I presently ranged close up to her rump, and with my third bullet (firing from my horse) brought her down with a crash, she had taken pretty heavy toll of me. My flannel shirt was torn to ribbons, and my chest and shoulders were rarely gashed about. Never hunt ‘camel’, gentlemen, in thick bush, without a stout coat on; that’s the advice of an old veldt-man, and it’s worth remembering. I ought to have known better that day, but I was not prepared for game at that particular moment.“Well, I stuck my knife into the cow’s back and found her well covered with fat, and the Masarwa coming up soon after, we set to work to skin and cut her up. Presently, having fastened about twenty pounds of meat to my saddle, and carrying the long, prehensile tongue dangling far below my belt, I saddled up, leaving the Masarwa, who had a calabash of water, to finish the job and wait for the wagon to pick him up next morning.“I myself took a sweep north-north-east, with the intention of working round to the wagon before sundown.“I had not left the Masarwa half an hour, when I suddenly, to my intense surprise, cut the spoor of a wagon running pretty well east and west, and going westward. It was not fresh, but at the same time not very old either. It might have been a month or two old at most. ‘Now,’ thought I, ‘what in the mischief does this mean?’ Very few hunters use this veldt. I knew Khama had sent no wagons that way this season, and the only white man in front of us this year was Dirk Starreberg, one of the few Dutch hunters to whom Khama gave permission to hunt in his veldt. Starreberg’s wagon it could only be. And yet it struck me as strange that Dirk, whom I knew well—for he was a noted interior hunter—should be trekking in this veldt. He was, I knew, bound for the Victoria Falls. Probably, like ourselves, enticed by the unwonted water supply and the possibility of a slap at the elephants, he had turned off somewhere between Nata River and Daka, and pushed across for the Chobé. Thus reasoning, I turned my horse’s head, and, with the westering sun now on my right flank, struck homeward for the wagon. I rode on for half a mile, and then came another strange thing. As I crossed an open glade I saw coming towards me the figure of a man. I knew in a moment who it was. The slouching walk, the big, burly form, the vast red beard, the rifle carried—as Dirk always carried his—by the muzzle end, with the stock poised behind his shoulder—it was none but Dirk Starreberg himself. But there was something amiss with him. He looked worn and troubled, almost distraught, it seemed to me, at that distance; and he gazed neither to right nor left of him, but passed hurriedly and very swiftly in front of me at a distance of about eighty paces.“‘Hallo! Dirk!’ I shouted. ‘Allemaghte! war loup jij? Wacht een bitje, Dirk!’ (Almighty! where are you off to? Wait a little, Dirk!) To my utter astonishment, the man took not the slightest notice, but passed on. I became indignant, and yelled, ‘Dirk, Dirk, have you no manners? It’s me, George Kenstone. I want you. Stop!’ Still the man passed on. In another moment he had reached the bush again. He turned now, beckoned to me with his right hand, and, in another instant, had disappeared into the low forest.“I was extremely annoyed, and after staring like a fool for a second or two, struck in spurs rather sharply and galloped after him. I was not three seconds in reaching the bush where he had entered, but, to my surprise, Dirk had vanished. I searched hither and thither, shouted—ay, swore—but still no Dirk. I came back, at length, to the point where I had last seen the Boer. Surprise Number 3. There was my own spoor as plain as a pikestaff in the red sand, but of Dirk Starrebergnot one trace of spoor was to be seen!“Now, spoor, as you all know, is a thing that never lies. I had seen Dirk cross the clearing and enter the bush at this point. Where were his tracks? I got off my horse and hunted carefully every bit of the way across the glade where I had seen Dirk pass. I am a reasonable good veldt-man, but—so help me God!—I never could find one trace of the man’s spoor, this way or that. I rubbed my eyes. It was incomprehensible. I searched again and again, carefully and methodically, with the same result. There was always my own and my horse’s spoor, but no one else’s.“By this time I was not a little bothered. There must be some infernal mystery which I could not fathom. My eyesight had never yet failed me. It was broad daylight, and I was neither asleep, nor dreaming, nor drunk. An old childish superstition crept for an instant upon my mind, to be instantly cast aside. And yet the flesh, even of grown manhood, is weak. I remember distinctly that I shivered, blazing hot as was the afternoon. The bush seemed very still and lonely, and I am bound to say it suddenly struck me it was time to move for the wagon. I got on to my good nag, walked him away, and presently set him into a brisk canter, which I only once slackened till I made the camp, just at sundown, a couple of hours later.“I told Angus what I had seen. He laughed, and told me I had evidently missed the spoor, although he admitted that it was strange that Dirk had made no sign when I hailed him; and next morning we moved on rapidly, picked up the meat of the dead giraffe, and then a little later struck the wagon-spoor I had found yesterday. This we followed briskly until four o’clock p.m., when we came upon an old outspan, and discovery Number 4.“Here was a good-sized water-pit in limestone formation. There were the remains of the camp-fire; and it was evident, from several indications, that the wagon, whosever it was, had stood at least two days at this spot. The camel-thorn trees (Giraffe-acacias) grew pretty thickly all around, and there was a good deal of bush, and altogether it was a sequestered, silent spot. Lying by the largest of the dead fires was an object that instantly quickened our interest in the mystery we were unravelling—the skeleton of a man, clean-picked by the foul vultures, but apparently untouched by jackals or hyaenas. There were still the tattered remains of clothing upon it, and one velschoen—a Boer velschoen—upon the right foot. I turned over the poor bleached framework to try and discover some inkling of its end. As I did so, out pattered from the skull on to the sand a solid Martini-Henry bullet, slightly flattened on one side of its apex, manifestly from impact with some bone it had encountered—probably a cheek-bone. A closer scrutiny revealed a big hole in rear of the skull just behind the right ear.“‘By George!’ exclaimed Angus, who was bending over me, ‘there’s been foul play here. That shot was fired at pretty close quarters.’“I nodded, and at that instant my Masarwa, who had been searching about near us, picked up and brought me a bunch of long red hair.“‘So help me God!’ I could not help exclaiming, ‘that’s from Dirk Starreberg’s beard, for any money! He has been murdered here—that’s certain. If it was an accident, they would have buried him. The question is, who is the murderer?’“We hunted about, but found no more traces, except the other velschoen and the remains of a Dutchman’s broad-brimmed hat. We outspanned for the night, and sat down to think it over and have a pipe while supper was being got ready.“‘Angus,’ I said, ‘I don’t half like things. There’s some dark riddle here. The figure I saw yesterday afternoon was Dirk Starreberg’s. I knew him well, and never could mistake him. And, strangely enough, he was heading, when I last saw him, for this very spot. If I believed in ghosts, which I don’t, I should say I had seen Dirk’s spook. What do you make of it all? I’m beginning to think I’m dreaming, or going dotty. It beats me altogether.’“‘Well,’ returned Angus, in his quaint way, ‘it’s the most extraordinary rum go I ever heard of. We’d better trek on in the morning, first thing, and see what else we can discover. Those are Dirk’s bones undoubtedly; we must try and do something for the poor chap, though he is dead.’“I don’t know what was wrong that night, but several times the oxen were startled, and sprang to their feet; and the nags—fastened up to the wagon-wheels—were desperately scared once or twice, and pulled at theirriemsas though they must break them; the dogs, too, barked and howled, and behaved very strangely. And yet no lions were near us. Once or twice we looked out, but saw nothing. All of us, masters and boys, were uncomfortable—we could hardly explain why, and the men undoubtedly knew nothing of what I had seen the day before.“At dawn next morning we were not sorry to inspan and trek; and, following the old wagon-spoor, we pushed on, determined if possible to get to the bottom of the affair. All that day and all the next we toiled on, only outspanning once or twice during the daytime, and at night, by water, to rest and refresh the oxen for a few hours. At last, an hour before sunset of the second day, Angus and I, who were riding ahead of the wagon, spied suddenly among some camel-thorn trees the tent of a wagon, to which we cantered. Suddenly, as we reined up, the fore-clap was cast aside, and a wild figure of a woman appeared, and scrambled down from the wagon-box. It was Vrouw Starreberg, but terribly, sadly altered from the stout, if somewhat grim, good-wife I had last seen a couple of years before. Her dark stuff dress was torn and cut about by the thorn-bushes; her erst fat, smooth face, broad though it still was, was lined and haggard, and terribly fallen away; but, above all, there was a rolling vacancy, a wildness, in her eye, that made me fear at once for her reason. Under one arm she clasped tightly a big Bible, and never in the subsequent days that we were together did she once relinquish it. It seemed that some terrible calamity had overturned her reason.“‘Whence come ye, George Kenstone?’ (she had known me well for years), she cried in a harsh, high-pitched scream, very painful to listen to. ‘Take me out of this desert, and back to my home. I have been cast away these six weeks able to move neither hand nor foot for freedom. The man I called husband is dead, and my servants have fled, and the oxen are gone—the Lord knows where.’“I scarce knew how to begin with her.“‘I’m sorry, Tant’ Starreberg,’ I said, ‘to find you in this plight. I’m afraid there has been sad mischief, and your husband has been shot. Is it not so? We will help you gladly, of course, and early in the morning, when the oxen will be rested, we will take you out of this place. I fear you have suffered much. But how came poor Dirk by his end? Was it the boys?’“At the mention of Dirk her whole expression changed; her eyes filled with a terrible light. In her best days Vrouw Starreberg was a hard-featured, ugly woman. Now she looked almost fiendish.“‘PoorDirk?’ she shrieked with a horrible scorn. ‘PoorDirk? No, I am not afraid to own it! The man you call Dirk Starreberg—he was no more husband of mine—died by my hand. I shot him; yes, dead I shot him, as he sat by his fire. And why? Because he lied and was unfaithful. Because he forsook me for that mop-headed, blue-eyed, pink-faced doll—Alletta Veeland. And when at last I had discovered all—he talked over-much in his sleep, the traitor!—and taxed him with it, here in this very veldt, he laughed me to scorn, and told me he was tired of my black face and my sour ways, and gloried in his evil love. Ja! he taunted me that I was old and barren—I that had made a man of him, and brought him gold, and flocks, and herds, and set him up. And so I shot him, as I say. I could endure it no longer; and the servants, having trekked to this place with me, fled, and the oxen wandered, and I am alone, the Lord help me!’ At the next instant the poor, overwrought creature fell in a swoon upon the sand.“Well, it was all very horrible; although even now we hardly knew what to believe. But we brought her to, gave her some brandy, and put her into her wagon to rest. And later on I took her some soup and bread, and made her eat it. She was exhausted now, and told me in a low voice that she had lived on meal and water for weeks past. Presently we turned in, and all was quiet.“It was, I suppose, some little time after midnight that Angus and I were roused by a loud voice beyond the camp-fire, which lay between the other wagon and our own. We listened; it was the vrouw herself. Hastily we got down from the kartel and went towards her. She was beyond the fire, and her figure was well-nigh lost in the gloom of night. We could just see her whitekopje, and an arm waving frantically. It was a terrible and uncanny scene. There stood the woman, screaming in wild and excited tones at something beyond—what we could not see, and shivered even to imagine. ‘Yes,’ she cried, ‘you come here to frighten me, Dirk Starreberg. I feared you not in life; I fear you not in death. I slew you, and I would slay you again. But I know why you walk thus through the veldt, and come seeking to drive me mad, night after night. To-morrow—now that I can trek—I will come and bury your bones, and you may rest quiet if you can. Trouble me no more, I say—begone!’“Angus and I could stand it no longer, sick with horror though we were.“‘Come back to your wagon, Vrouw Starreberg,’ I called out ‘You are dreaming. Go to rest again!’“Still glaring in front of her, the woman stepped back till she had met our advance. I am bound to say that I looked, and Angus looked, with terrified eyes, but saw nothing of what she saw or thought she saw. We took the poor mad creature’s arms. She was trembling and wet—literally bathed in perspiration. What the tension must have been if this sort of thing had been going on sight after night, I shuddered even to think of. We took her to her wagon and gave her a strong dose of brandy and water, and presently she fell into heavy sleep. Then Angus and I got down our karosses, rekindled a roaring fire, and sat smoking by the blaze for the rest of that sight. Scared as I was, I believe I dozed once or twice, and Angus always swears, to this day, that he once saw the figure of Dirk Starreberg pass within the firelight fifty yards away. He woke me, but it had gone. The cattle were uneasy and disturbed again, and our Kaffirs, who had heard the vrouw talking, as they said, at a spook, lay huddled together under our wagon. It was uncanny, devilish uncanny, I can tell you, that intangible horror about the camp.“Well, the rest of my story is short. Vrouw Starreberg was moving before dawn, and insisted that we must trek back to the old camp and bury the skeleton. We—fearing more horrors—said it could not be done, and that we should at once quit the bush and strike directly for the road. She then utterly refused to leave her wagon unless we did as she asked. We seriously thought of taking her by force, but she was a strong, powerful woman, her mind was already unhinged, and we feared the consequences of a struggle. And so, very reluctantly, we agreed to humour her and give her her wish. It was a ghastly business; we only prayed to get it quickly over.“At earliest streak of daylight we were in-spanned, and all day travelled steadily back towards the scene of Dirk’s tragical ending. That night, strange to say, nothing happened to disturb us; everything passed quietly. We trekked again all next day, and halted for the night some three miles short of ‘the skeleton outspan,’ as we called it. Our reason for this was that we hoped the burial might be quietly accomplished in the bright sunshine of next morning, and the woman got well away, before nightfall, on the homeward journey. Vrouw Starreberg, I noticed, was restless and excited, but she made no objection. Again, I noticed that she still carried her Bible tightly clasped under the left arm. The vrouw lay in our wagon; Angus and I sleeping by the fire again. We were dog-tired, and slept soundly until roused, just as daylight broke, by our wagon-driver, a Griqua named Albrecht. The man was looking very strangely. ‘Baas,’ he said, ‘the vrouw is not there,’ (pointing to the wagon); ‘she went in the night. I heard her whispering, and I looked from where I was lying, and there she was, beyond the firelight, following a man—a Dutchman, I think—or a spook, I don’t know which, towards the murderer’s outspan (de mordenaar’s outspan to). I was frightened, Baas, and I dared not move. There is her spoor; but the man’s spoor I cannot see.’“We sprang to our feet and went straight to the wagon; the fore-clap was pulled aside; the kartel was empty. Yes, she had gone; and our hearts were sick with a nameless fear. Taking Albrecht with us, we saddled up at once, and spoored the vrouw along the track towards the old outspan. And there, surely enough, we found her, stone-dead by the side of the skeleton.“There was no mark upon her, but in her face was the most awful look of horror and of fright that I ever saw upon the countenance of the dead. I believe she had died of sheer terror, and of nothing else. What had happened in those silent, terrible night hours—by what ghastly agency she had been dragged to the scene of the tragedy; how the end had actually come, God only knows.“We were but too anxious to get away from this dreadful place after such events. We buried the body and skeleton together, and trekked out as fast as the oxen could travel, never stopping till we had struck the road and reached Scio Pans.“That, gentlemen, is my solitary experience of spooks. I never want to have another. I was a scoffer before; I am a believer now. And if you told me that in the bush I speak of there were now standing ready for me, as a free gift, two buck-wagons loaded up with ivory—why, I should decline the offer.“Never would I be induced to enter that veldt again!”
One of the cheeriest of Christmas Days was that spent on the pleasant banks of the Limpopo River, not many years since. Two hunting friends were trekking through Bechuanaland towards the Zambesi, and it happened by great good fortune that, just at the junction of the Notwani and Limpopo Rivers, they found outspanned the wagons of two hunters and traders southward bound from the far interior. These men were travelling down-country with heavy loads of ivory, ostrich feathers, skins, and other produce, and they had with them a big troop of cattle obtained in barter. In these fitful encounters in the African wilderness men are always well met, and it needed no pressing from the new-found acquaintances to induce them to outspan together, and combine forces for Christmas cheer and Christmas chatter. A brief council of war soon settled the all-important question of commissariat. Smallfield, the younger of the traders, had shot a good rooibok the evening before, which furnished venison for all, and they had already baked a store of bread from fresh Boer meal. The new-comers, on their side, freshly equipped from Kimberley, could provide tinned plum-puddings, tinned tomatoes, peas, jams, and other luxuries, including dried onions, most precious of vegetables in the veldt; and they had further some excellent Scotch whisky. They had, besides, half a dozen brace of guinea-fowl and pheasants, shot during the day in the jungles bordering the river, so that all the concomitants of a capital African banquet were ready to hand.
Just at sundown the preparations were complete, and no merrier party, you may swear, ever sat down to their Christmas meal. They supped by the light of a roaring camp-fire, eked out by a lantern or two placed on the cases that served for tables. The servants were enjoying themselves at another fire at a little distance; the oxen lay peacefully at their yokes; the wagons loomed large alongside, their white tents reflecting cheerfully the ruddy blaze of the fire; the night was perfect, still and warm, and the stars, like a million diamond sparks, scintillated in the intense darkness of the dome above. What wonder, then, that all felt happy and contented?
Supper at length over, the coffee-kettle was banished to obscurity and the whisky produced. The travellers lit their pipes and toasted their absent friends and each other, and then ensued a long and delightful evening.
The traders were two capital, manly fellows, well versed in the sports and toils and pleasures of the far interior; the new-comers themselves had been in the hunting veldt before, and they had all, therefore, many things in common. Many and many a yarn of the chase and adventure they exchanged; many a head of gallant game they slew again by the cheerful blaze. The up-country trekkers mentioned that they thought of trying a new bit of veldt, rather away from the beaten track, if but they could find water in the desert, and good guides and spoorers—they were bent on entering the wild and little-known tract of country north of the road to the Mababi veldt. “Well,” said the elder of the traders—Kenstone was his name—“you’ll find game there after the rains—giraffe, gemsbok, hartebeest, eland, koodoo, roan antelope, and perhaps a few elephant, or a rhinoceros or two. But it’s a wild, barren veldt; the country as you go north is a good deal broken, and, unless the rains have been good, water is terribly scarce there. As for myself,” (gazing rather moodily at the camp-fire, and stroking his thick, brown beard), “I once went into that veldt, and never wish to see it again. I had a most uncanny adventure there—an experience I never again wish to repeat if I live to a hundred. In all the years (and they are close on five-and-twenty now) I have been in the hunting veldt, I never spent so incomprehensible and horrible a time as the few days I am thinking of. Ugh!” and the big man shivered as he spoke.
Naturally the curiosity of his audience was at once excited. The younger trader, Smallfield, spoke first.
“Why, George,” he said, “I never heard you speak of that country. I never even knew you had been in it. What’s the yarn? It must be something out of the common if it givesyouthe blues. You’re not sentimental, as far as I remember.”
“No, Jim,” returned Kenstone, “I never mentioned the thing to you or to any one else, bar, perhaps, two or three folks. It’s eleven years gone since it all happened. My old partner, Angus (he’s down in the Colony now), who was with me at the time, knows all about it, and I reported some of the circumstances to a Transvaal Landdrost when we got back. Otherwise I have never talked about the matter—I should only be chaffed, and it’s not a pleasant topic at the best of times. It gave me a very nastyschrijk(Fright) at the time, I remember. However, it’s all far enough away now; if you and these gentlemen would like to hear the yarn, as it’s Christmas-time, and we’re so well met, why, I’ll break my rule and tell you all about it. And mind, what I tell you are solid facts. You know I don’t ‘blow,’ Jim, or spout tall yarns for the benefit of down-country folks or bar-loafers at Kimberley. What I saw I saw, and, please God, hope never to see again.”
All were as keen as mustard for the story, and Kenstone went on.
“Well, let me fill my pipe, and give me anothersoupjeof whisky, and,” (nodding a health to his hearers over his glass) “here goes:—
“It was in ’74 that Angus and I were making our third trip to the Lake N’gami country. This time we had got leave from Khama to trade and hunt in Mababi and the Chobé River country; and we meant to push even beyond, to the region between the Sunta and the Okavango, if the fever would let us. We made a good trek of it across the ‘thirst’—there had been very late rains that year—and even after crossing the Lake River we made good travelling well on towards the Mababi flat. We heard from the Makobas and Masarwas along the river that there was still some water standing in the bush on our right hand, that there were elephant in there, and that other game was abundant. It is not often that this veldt is accessible—from scarcity of water—and it seemed good enough to quit the wagon road for a time, and try the bush for ivory. Before reaching Scio Pans, therefore, we turned right-handed, and struck into the bush with one wagon—the other, in charge of our head driver, being sent on to the water, there to await our coming.
“We had some Masarwa bushmen with us, and they were as keen as hawks at the prospect of showing us heavy game, and getting a liberal supply of flesh. Northward we trekked steadily through wild desolate country for the best part of one day, and outspanned by a desert pool for the night. Here we were greatly disappointed to find no spoor of elephant, although giraffe, ostrich, gemsbok, and hartebeest were fairly plentiful. Next day at dawn we again pushed doggedly on, Angus and I taking different directions, and riding some miles ahead of the wagon on the look-out for elephant-spoor. I rode behind a Masarwa at a steady pace all morning without finding the least sign of the game we wanted, and, after an off-saddle at midday, once more pushed on in a north-westerly direction.
“Rather suddenly we came upon aklompjeof giraffe, and as the elephants seemed very much in the air and we wanted meat, I rammed the spurs in and galloped headlong for thekameels(Camels. The Boer term for giraffe). It was desperately hot, and we were shut up in thick thorny bush in which not a breath of wind stirred, and I consequently had not got my coat on. The beast I rode for, a fat, fresh young cow, led me a pretty dance of two miles, hell for leather, at a terrific pace through the very thorniest jungle she could pick; and although I presently ranged close up to her rump, and with my third bullet (firing from my horse) brought her down with a crash, she had taken pretty heavy toll of me. My flannel shirt was torn to ribbons, and my chest and shoulders were rarely gashed about. Never hunt ‘camel’, gentlemen, in thick bush, without a stout coat on; that’s the advice of an old veldt-man, and it’s worth remembering. I ought to have known better that day, but I was not prepared for game at that particular moment.
“Well, I stuck my knife into the cow’s back and found her well covered with fat, and the Masarwa coming up soon after, we set to work to skin and cut her up. Presently, having fastened about twenty pounds of meat to my saddle, and carrying the long, prehensile tongue dangling far below my belt, I saddled up, leaving the Masarwa, who had a calabash of water, to finish the job and wait for the wagon to pick him up next morning.
“I myself took a sweep north-north-east, with the intention of working round to the wagon before sundown.
“I had not left the Masarwa half an hour, when I suddenly, to my intense surprise, cut the spoor of a wagon running pretty well east and west, and going westward. It was not fresh, but at the same time not very old either. It might have been a month or two old at most. ‘Now,’ thought I, ‘what in the mischief does this mean?’ Very few hunters use this veldt. I knew Khama had sent no wagons that way this season, and the only white man in front of us this year was Dirk Starreberg, one of the few Dutch hunters to whom Khama gave permission to hunt in his veldt. Starreberg’s wagon it could only be. And yet it struck me as strange that Dirk, whom I knew well—for he was a noted interior hunter—should be trekking in this veldt. He was, I knew, bound for the Victoria Falls. Probably, like ourselves, enticed by the unwonted water supply and the possibility of a slap at the elephants, he had turned off somewhere between Nata River and Daka, and pushed across for the Chobé. Thus reasoning, I turned my horse’s head, and, with the westering sun now on my right flank, struck homeward for the wagon. I rode on for half a mile, and then came another strange thing. As I crossed an open glade I saw coming towards me the figure of a man. I knew in a moment who it was. The slouching walk, the big, burly form, the vast red beard, the rifle carried—as Dirk always carried his—by the muzzle end, with the stock poised behind his shoulder—it was none but Dirk Starreberg himself. But there was something amiss with him. He looked worn and troubled, almost distraught, it seemed to me, at that distance; and he gazed neither to right nor left of him, but passed hurriedly and very swiftly in front of me at a distance of about eighty paces.
“‘Hallo! Dirk!’ I shouted. ‘Allemaghte! war loup jij? Wacht een bitje, Dirk!’ (Almighty! where are you off to? Wait a little, Dirk!) To my utter astonishment, the man took not the slightest notice, but passed on. I became indignant, and yelled, ‘Dirk, Dirk, have you no manners? It’s me, George Kenstone. I want you. Stop!’ Still the man passed on. In another moment he had reached the bush again. He turned now, beckoned to me with his right hand, and, in another instant, had disappeared into the low forest.
“I was extremely annoyed, and after staring like a fool for a second or two, struck in spurs rather sharply and galloped after him. I was not three seconds in reaching the bush where he had entered, but, to my surprise, Dirk had vanished. I searched hither and thither, shouted—ay, swore—but still no Dirk. I came back, at length, to the point where I had last seen the Boer. Surprise Number 3. There was my own spoor as plain as a pikestaff in the red sand, but of Dirk Starrebergnot one trace of spoor was to be seen!
“Now, spoor, as you all know, is a thing that never lies. I had seen Dirk cross the clearing and enter the bush at this point. Where were his tracks? I got off my horse and hunted carefully every bit of the way across the glade where I had seen Dirk pass. I am a reasonable good veldt-man, but—so help me God!—I never could find one trace of the man’s spoor, this way or that. I rubbed my eyes. It was incomprehensible. I searched again and again, carefully and methodically, with the same result. There was always my own and my horse’s spoor, but no one else’s.
“By this time I was not a little bothered. There must be some infernal mystery which I could not fathom. My eyesight had never yet failed me. It was broad daylight, and I was neither asleep, nor dreaming, nor drunk. An old childish superstition crept for an instant upon my mind, to be instantly cast aside. And yet the flesh, even of grown manhood, is weak. I remember distinctly that I shivered, blazing hot as was the afternoon. The bush seemed very still and lonely, and I am bound to say it suddenly struck me it was time to move for the wagon. I got on to my good nag, walked him away, and presently set him into a brisk canter, which I only once slackened till I made the camp, just at sundown, a couple of hours later.
“I told Angus what I had seen. He laughed, and told me I had evidently missed the spoor, although he admitted that it was strange that Dirk had made no sign when I hailed him; and next morning we moved on rapidly, picked up the meat of the dead giraffe, and then a little later struck the wagon-spoor I had found yesterday. This we followed briskly until four o’clock p.m., when we came upon an old outspan, and discovery Number 4.
“Here was a good-sized water-pit in limestone formation. There were the remains of the camp-fire; and it was evident, from several indications, that the wagon, whosever it was, had stood at least two days at this spot. The camel-thorn trees (Giraffe-acacias) grew pretty thickly all around, and there was a good deal of bush, and altogether it was a sequestered, silent spot. Lying by the largest of the dead fires was an object that instantly quickened our interest in the mystery we were unravelling—the skeleton of a man, clean-picked by the foul vultures, but apparently untouched by jackals or hyaenas. There were still the tattered remains of clothing upon it, and one velschoen—a Boer velschoen—upon the right foot. I turned over the poor bleached framework to try and discover some inkling of its end. As I did so, out pattered from the skull on to the sand a solid Martini-Henry bullet, slightly flattened on one side of its apex, manifestly from impact with some bone it had encountered—probably a cheek-bone. A closer scrutiny revealed a big hole in rear of the skull just behind the right ear.
“‘By George!’ exclaimed Angus, who was bending over me, ‘there’s been foul play here. That shot was fired at pretty close quarters.’
“I nodded, and at that instant my Masarwa, who had been searching about near us, picked up and brought me a bunch of long red hair.
“‘So help me God!’ I could not help exclaiming, ‘that’s from Dirk Starreberg’s beard, for any money! He has been murdered here—that’s certain. If it was an accident, they would have buried him. The question is, who is the murderer?’
“We hunted about, but found no more traces, except the other velschoen and the remains of a Dutchman’s broad-brimmed hat. We outspanned for the night, and sat down to think it over and have a pipe while supper was being got ready.
“‘Angus,’ I said, ‘I don’t half like things. There’s some dark riddle here. The figure I saw yesterday afternoon was Dirk Starreberg’s. I knew him well, and never could mistake him. And, strangely enough, he was heading, when I last saw him, for this very spot. If I believed in ghosts, which I don’t, I should say I had seen Dirk’s spook. What do you make of it all? I’m beginning to think I’m dreaming, or going dotty. It beats me altogether.’
“‘Well,’ returned Angus, in his quaint way, ‘it’s the most extraordinary rum go I ever heard of. We’d better trek on in the morning, first thing, and see what else we can discover. Those are Dirk’s bones undoubtedly; we must try and do something for the poor chap, though he is dead.’
“I don’t know what was wrong that night, but several times the oxen were startled, and sprang to their feet; and the nags—fastened up to the wagon-wheels—were desperately scared once or twice, and pulled at theirriemsas though they must break them; the dogs, too, barked and howled, and behaved very strangely. And yet no lions were near us. Once or twice we looked out, but saw nothing. All of us, masters and boys, were uncomfortable—we could hardly explain why, and the men undoubtedly knew nothing of what I had seen the day before.
“At dawn next morning we were not sorry to inspan and trek; and, following the old wagon-spoor, we pushed on, determined if possible to get to the bottom of the affair. All that day and all the next we toiled on, only outspanning once or twice during the daytime, and at night, by water, to rest and refresh the oxen for a few hours. At last, an hour before sunset of the second day, Angus and I, who were riding ahead of the wagon, spied suddenly among some camel-thorn trees the tent of a wagon, to which we cantered. Suddenly, as we reined up, the fore-clap was cast aside, and a wild figure of a woman appeared, and scrambled down from the wagon-box. It was Vrouw Starreberg, but terribly, sadly altered from the stout, if somewhat grim, good-wife I had last seen a couple of years before. Her dark stuff dress was torn and cut about by the thorn-bushes; her erst fat, smooth face, broad though it still was, was lined and haggard, and terribly fallen away; but, above all, there was a rolling vacancy, a wildness, in her eye, that made me fear at once for her reason. Under one arm she clasped tightly a big Bible, and never in the subsequent days that we were together did she once relinquish it. It seemed that some terrible calamity had overturned her reason.
“‘Whence come ye, George Kenstone?’ (she had known me well for years), she cried in a harsh, high-pitched scream, very painful to listen to. ‘Take me out of this desert, and back to my home. I have been cast away these six weeks able to move neither hand nor foot for freedom. The man I called husband is dead, and my servants have fled, and the oxen are gone—the Lord knows where.’
“I scarce knew how to begin with her.
“‘I’m sorry, Tant’ Starreberg,’ I said, ‘to find you in this plight. I’m afraid there has been sad mischief, and your husband has been shot. Is it not so? We will help you gladly, of course, and early in the morning, when the oxen will be rested, we will take you out of this place. I fear you have suffered much. But how came poor Dirk by his end? Was it the boys?’
“At the mention of Dirk her whole expression changed; her eyes filled with a terrible light. In her best days Vrouw Starreberg was a hard-featured, ugly woman. Now she looked almost fiendish.
“‘PoorDirk?’ she shrieked with a horrible scorn. ‘PoorDirk? No, I am not afraid to own it! The man you call Dirk Starreberg—he was no more husband of mine—died by my hand. I shot him; yes, dead I shot him, as he sat by his fire. And why? Because he lied and was unfaithful. Because he forsook me for that mop-headed, blue-eyed, pink-faced doll—Alletta Veeland. And when at last I had discovered all—he talked over-much in his sleep, the traitor!—and taxed him with it, here in this very veldt, he laughed me to scorn, and told me he was tired of my black face and my sour ways, and gloried in his evil love. Ja! he taunted me that I was old and barren—I that had made a man of him, and brought him gold, and flocks, and herds, and set him up. And so I shot him, as I say. I could endure it no longer; and the servants, having trekked to this place with me, fled, and the oxen wandered, and I am alone, the Lord help me!’ At the next instant the poor, overwrought creature fell in a swoon upon the sand.
“Well, it was all very horrible; although even now we hardly knew what to believe. But we brought her to, gave her some brandy, and put her into her wagon to rest. And later on I took her some soup and bread, and made her eat it. She was exhausted now, and told me in a low voice that she had lived on meal and water for weeks past. Presently we turned in, and all was quiet.
“It was, I suppose, some little time after midnight that Angus and I were roused by a loud voice beyond the camp-fire, which lay between the other wagon and our own. We listened; it was the vrouw herself. Hastily we got down from the kartel and went towards her. She was beyond the fire, and her figure was well-nigh lost in the gloom of night. We could just see her whitekopje, and an arm waving frantically. It was a terrible and uncanny scene. There stood the woman, screaming in wild and excited tones at something beyond—what we could not see, and shivered even to imagine. ‘Yes,’ she cried, ‘you come here to frighten me, Dirk Starreberg. I feared you not in life; I fear you not in death. I slew you, and I would slay you again. But I know why you walk thus through the veldt, and come seeking to drive me mad, night after night. To-morrow—now that I can trek—I will come and bury your bones, and you may rest quiet if you can. Trouble me no more, I say—begone!’
“Angus and I could stand it no longer, sick with horror though we were.
“‘Come back to your wagon, Vrouw Starreberg,’ I called out ‘You are dreaming. Go to rest again!’
“Still glaring in front of her, the woman stepped back till she had met our advance. I am bound to say that I looked, and Angus looked, with terrified eyes, but saw nothing of what she saw or thought she saw. We took the poor mad creature’s arms. She was trembling and wet—literally bathed in perspiration. What the tension must have been if this sort of thing had been going on sight after night, I shuddered even to think of. We took her to her wagon and gave her a strong dose of brandy and water, and presently she fell into heavy sleep. Then Angus and I got down our karosses, rekindled a roaring fire, and sat smoking by the blaze for the rest of that sight. Scared as I was, I believe I dozed once or twice, and Angus always swears, to this day, that he once saw the figure of Dirk Starreberg pass within the firelight fifty yards away. He woke me, but it had gone. The cattle were uneasy and disturbed again, and our Kaffirs, who had heard the vrouw talking, as they said, at a spook, lay huddled together under our wagon. It was uncanny, devilish uncanny, I can tell you, that intangible horror about the camp.
“Well, the rest of my story is short. Vrouw Starreberg was moving before dawn, and insisted that we must trek back to the old camp and bury the skeleton. We—fearing more horrors—said it could not be done, and that we should at once quit the bush and strike directly for the road. She then utterly refused to leave her wagon unless we did as she asked. We seriously thought of taking her by force, but she was a strong, powerful woman, her mind was already unhinged, and we feared the consequences of a struggle. And so, very reluctantly, we agreed to humour her and give her her wish. It was a ghastly business; we only prayed to get it quickly over.
“At earliest streak of daylight we were in-spanned, and all day travelled steadily back towards the scene of Dirk’s tragical ending. That night, strange to say, nothing happened to disturb us; everything passed quietly. We trekked again all next day, and halted for the night some three miles short of ‘the skeleton outspan,’ as we called it. Our reason for this was that we hoped the burial might be quietly accomplished in the bright sunshine of next morning, and the woman got well away, before nightfall, on the homeward journey. Vrouw Starreberg, I noticed, was restless and excited, but she made no objection. Again, I noticed that she still carried her Bible tightly clasped under the left arm. The vrouw lay in our wagon; Angus and I sleeping by the fire again. We were dog-tired, and slept soundly until roused, just as daylight broke, by our wagon-driver, a Griqua named Albrecht. The man was looking very strangely. ‘Baas,’ he said, ‘the vrouw is not there,’ (pointing to the wagon); ‘she went in the night. I heard her whispering, and I looked from where I was lying, and there she was, beyond the firelight, following a man—a Dutchman, I think—or a spook, I don’t know which, towards the murderer’s outspan (de mordenaar’s outspan to). I was frightened, Baas, and I dared not move. There is her spoor; but the man’s spoor I cannot see.’
“We sprang to our feet and went straight to the wagon; the fore-clap was pulled aside; the kartel was empty. Yes, she had gone; and our hearts were sick with a nameless fear. Taking Albrecht with us, we saddled up at once, and spoored the vrouw along the track towards the old outspan. And there, surely enough, we found her, stone-dead by the side of the skeleton.
“There was no mark upon her, but in her face was the most awful look of horror and of fright that I ever saw upon the countenance of the dead. I believe she had died of sheer terror, and of nothing else. What had happened in those silent, terrible night hours—by what ghastly agency she had been dragged to the scene of the tragedy; how the end had actually come, God only knows.
“We were but too anxious to get away from this dreadful place after such events. We buried the body and skeleton together, and trekked out as fast as the oxen could travel, never stopping till we had struck the road and reached Scio Pans.
“That, gentlemen, is my solitary experience of spooks. I never want to have another. I was a scoffer before; I am a believer now. And if you told me that in the bush I speak of there were now standing ready for me, as a free gift, two buck-wagons loaded up with ivory—why, I should decline the offer.
“Never would I be induced to enter that veldt again!”
Chapter Four.The Professor’s Butterfly.Quite the most remarkable feature of an April meeting of the Entomological Society in 1880 something was the production, by Professor Parchell, F.Z.S., F.L.S., one of the oldest and most enthusiastic members of the Society, of a new and remarkable species ofAchraeahitherto quite unknown to science. The Professor was radiant and suffused with happiness. He had long been an ardent collector in England and Europe; but only recently had he turned his footsteps to the far-off lands south of the equator. It had been the dream of his life. And now, having lately resigned his chair at Cambridge, at the age of sixty, at his first essay in Cape Colony, a region fairly well-known to entomologists, he had gratified his heart’s desire, and discovered a species.The new butterfly, which, it appeared, from a paper read by the Professor, had been found in some numbers, but within a very limited area—a mere speck of country—was shown in a carefully constructed case. There were sixteen specimens; and it was settled that the butterfly was to be known to science asAchraea Parchelli, thus perpetuating the Professor and his discovery to the ages yet unborn. The one particularity which marked the insect out from among its fellows was very striking. Upon the upper side of the hind-wings, right in the centre, there appeared a complete triangular space of silver, evenly bordered by circular black markings. This peculiarity, which was shared by male and female alike, was very beautiful and very marked; and the enthusiastic collectors gathered at the Society’s meeting were, as the box of specimens was passed from hand to hand, all delighted with the new treasure. As for the Professor himself, never, except perhaps in that supreme moment when he had discovered within his net this new wonder, had he experienced such a glow of rapture and of triumph.Amongst the Fellows of the Society met this evening sat Horace Maybold, a good-looking young man of six-and-twenty, who, having some private means, and an unquenchable thirst for the collection of butterflies, spent most of his time in going to and fro upon the earth in search of rare specie, Horace had travelled in many lands, and had made a good many discoveries well-known to his brethren; and quite recently he had turned his attention to theAchraeinae, the very family in which Professor Parchell had made his mark. The new butterfly interested him a good deal. Naturally he at once burned to possess it in his own collection, and, after the meeting broke up, he approached the Professor and sounded him on the subject. In his paper read to the Society that gentleman had rather vaguely, described the habitat of the new species as “in the Eastern Province of Cape Colony, in a small and compact area within fifty miles of the east bank of the Sunday’s River.” But it appeared very quickly that the Professor for the present was unwilling to part with any of his specimens—even for an adequate consideration—or to impart the exact locality in which the species was to be found.Horace had rather reckoned upon this, but he was none the less a little chagrined at the old gentleman’s closeness.“No, my dear sir,” had replied the Professor to his inquiries, “I can’t part with any of my specimens, except to the Natural History Museum, to which I intend to present a pair. As for the precise habitat, I intend—ahem!—for the present to reserve that secret to myself. It is a pardonable piece of selfishness—or shall I term it self-preservation?—you, as a collector, must admit I intend to renew my acquaintance with the spot towards the beginning of next winter—that is the summer of the Cape. When I have collected more specimens, I may publish my secret to the world—hardly before.”Horace looked keenly at the face of the clean, pink and white old gentleman before him. There was no compromise in the set of the firm lips, or the blue eyes beaming pleasantly from behind the gold-rimmed spectacles; and so, with a polite sentence or two on his lips, but with some vexation at his heart, Horace Maybold turned away and went down to his club.During the rest of that summer Horace was pretty much occupied, yet his memory never relaxed its grip of the Professor and his new butterfly. He had upon his writing-table the coloured plate from a scientific magazine, whereon was depicted that rare species; and as he refreshed his memory with it now and again, he determined more than ever to possess himself of specimens of the original. As far as possible he kept a sharp eye on the Professor’s movements until the middle of September, when, happening to return to town from a few days’ shooting, he ran across the old gentleman in Piccadilly.“Well, Professor,” said Horace, genially, “how goes the world with you? I suppose you will be leaving England for the Cape again presently?”“Yes,” returned the old gentleman, who seemed in excellent spirits; “I expect to be sailing early in October. I want to have a fortnight or more in Cape Town at the Museum there. After that I propose proceeding to my old hunting-ground of last year.”“Where you discovered the newAchraea?” interposed Horace.“Exactly,” rejoined the old gentleman.“I quite envy you, Professor,” went on Horace. “I am in two minds about visiting South Africa myself this winter. The Orange River country hasn’t been half ransacked yet, or Kaffraria either, for that matter. I haven’t settled my plans; but I may have a turn at one or the other.”Now Kaffraria lies not very far to the east of the Professor’s own collecting-ground, that sacred spot which held his great secret yet inviolate. The old gentleman’s face changed perceptibly; a stiffer line or two appeared about his mouth; he looked with some suspicion into Horace’s eyes, and said, rather shortly: “Ah, well! I am told the Orange River is an excellent and untried region. But, entomologically, South Africa upon the wholeispoor. My visits there are mainly for health and change. But I must be getting on; I have much to do. Good-bye, Mr Maybold—good-bye!”The Professor passed on down St James’s Street, and Horace sauntered along Piccadilly with a smile upon his face. The old gentleman had imparted something of his movements. Should he follow them up? Yes; he must have thatAchraea Parchellisomehow. Hewouldfollow to the Eastern Province in November. It might be a trifle like poaching; but, after all, the world is not a butterfly preserve for the one or two lucky ones. It lies open to every entomologist. And the old man had been so confoundedly close and secret. It would serve him right to discover his sacred treasure and make plain his mystery.After watching the weekly passenger list inSouth Africafor some time; Horace Maybold noted with interest that Professor Parchell had sailed for Cape Town by a Donald Currie steamer in the first week of October. That fact ascertained, he at once secured a berth in a deck cabin of theNorham Castlefor the first week in November. The chase had begun, and already Horace felt a keen and amusing sense of adventure—adventure in little—springing within him.After Madeira, when all had found their sea-legs, and the warm weather and smooth ocean appeared, things became very pleasant. Horace was not a man who quickly became intimate or much attached to people; but, almost insensibly, upon this voyage he found himself developing a strong friendship, almost an intimacy, with two ladies: one, Mrs Stacer, a pleasant, comely, middle-aged woman, perhaps nearer fifty than forty; the other, Miss Vanning, young, good-looking, and extremely attractive. The two ladies, who were connected, if not relations, were travelling to Port Elizabeth to stay with friends in that part of the colony—where, exactly, was never quite made clear. Horace found them refined, well-bred, charming women, having many things in common with him; and the trio in a day or two’s time got on swimmingly together.By the time the line was reached, the vision of Rose Vanning, with her fair, wavy brown hair, good grey eyes, fresh complexion, and open, yet slightly restrained manner, was for ever before the mental ken of Horace May bold. Here, indeed, he told himself, was the typical English girl he had so often set before his mind; fresh, tallish, full of health, alert, vigorous in mind and body, yet a thorough and a perfect woman. On many a warm tropical evening, as they sat together on deck, while the big ship drove her way through the oil-like ocean, sending shoals of flying-fish scudding to right and left of her, the two chatted together, and day by day their intimacy quickened. It was clear to Horace, and it began, too, to dawn upon Mrs Stacer, that Rose Vanning found a more than ordinary pleasure in his presence. By the time they were within a day of Cape Town, Horace had more than half made up his mind. He had gently opened the trenches with Mrs Stacer, who had met him almost half-way, and had obtained permission to call upon them in London—at a house north of Hyde Park, where they were living. At present they knew so little of him and his people, that he felt it would be unfair to push matters further. But he had mentioned Mrs Stacer’s invitation to Rose Vanning.“I hope, Miss Vanning,” he said, “you won’t quite have forgotten me when I come to see you—let me see—about next May. It’s a very long way off, isn’t it? And people and things change so quickly in these times.” He looked a little anxiously at the girl as he spoke; what he saw reassured him a good deal.“If you haven’t forgotten us, Mr Maybold,” she said, a pretty flush rising as she spoke, “I’m quite sure we shall remember and be glad to see you. We’ve had such good times together, and I hope you’ll come and see us soon. We shall be home in April at latest, and we shall have, no doubt, heaps of adventures to compare.”At Cape Town, Horace, after many inquiries, had half settled upon a journey along the Orange River. He had more than one reason for this. Perhaps Rose Vanning’s influence had sharpened his moral sense; who knows? At any rate, he had begun to think it was playing it rather low down upon the Professor, to follow him up and poach his preserves. He could do the Orange River this season, and wait another year for theAchraea Parchelli; by that time the old gentleman would probably have had his fill, and would not mind imparting the secret, if properly approached. And so the Orange River was decided upon, and in three or four days he was to start.Upon the following evening, however, something happened to alter these plans. Half an hour before dinner, as he was sitting on the pleasantstoep(veranda) of the International Hotel, enjoying a cigarette, a man whose face he seemed to know came up to him and instantly claimed acquaintance. “You remember me, surely, Maybold?” he said. “I was at Marlborough with you—in the same form for three terms.”Of course Horace remembered him; and they sat at dinner together and had a long yarn far into the night.The upshot of this meeting was that nothing would satisfy John Marley—“Johnny,” he was always called—but Horace should go round by sea with him to Port Elizabeth, and stop a few weeks at his farm, some little way up-country from that place. When he was tired of that, he could go on by rail from Cradock, and complete his programme on the Orange River.“If you want butterflies, my boy,” said Johnny in his hearty way, “you shall have lots at my place—tons of them after the rains; and we’ll have some rattling good shooting as well. You can’t be always running about after ‘bugs,’ you know.”So, next day but one, Horace, little loth, was haled by his friend down to the docks again, and thence round to Port Elizabeth by steamer. From Port Elizabeth they proceeded, partly by rail partly by Cape cart and horses, in a north-easterly direction, until at length, after the best part of a day’s journey through some wild and most beautiful scenery, they drove up late in the evening to a long, low, comfortable farmhouse, shaded by a big verandah, where they were met and welcomed by Marley’s wife and three sturdy children. After allowing his friend a day’s rest, to unpack his kit and get out his gunnery and collecting-boxes, Johnny plunged him into a vortex of sport and hard work. A fortnight had vanished ere Horace could cry off. He had enjoyed it all immensely; but he really must get on with the butterflies, especially if he meant to go north to the Orange River.Marley pretended to grumble a little at his friend’s desertion of buck-shooting for butterfly-collecting; but he quickly placed at his disposal a sharp Hottentot boy, Jacobus by name, who knew every nook and corner of that vast countryside, and, barring a little laziness, natural to Hottentot blood, proved a perfect treasure to the entomologist. The weather was perfection. Some fine showers had fallen, vegetation had suddenly started into life, and the flowers were everywhere ablaze. The bush was in its glory.Amid all this regeneration of nature, butterflies and insects were extremely abundant. Horace had a great time of it, and day after day added largely to his collection. One morning, flitting about here and there, he noticed a butterfly that seemed new to him. He quickly had a specimen within his net, and, to his intense satisfaction, found it as he had suspected, a new species. It belonged to the genusEurema, which contains but few species, and somewhat resembledEurema schaeneia(Trimen), a handsome dark-brown and yellow butterfly, with tailed hind-wings. But Horace’s new capture was widely different, in this respect: the whole of the under surface of the wings was suffused with a strong roseate pink, which mingled here and there with the brown, sometimes darker, sometimes lighter in its hue.Here was a thrilling discovery—a discovery which, as Horace laughingly said to himself, would make old Parchell “sit up” at their Society’s meeting next spring. Horace captured eight more specimens—the butterfly was not too plentiful—and then made for home in an ecstasy of delight.A few days after this memorable event he set off with Jacobus for a farmhouse thirty miles away, to the owner of which—an English Afrikander—Marley had given him an introduction. As they passed near the kloof where the new butterfly had been discovered, which lay about half-way, Horace off-saddled for an hour, and picked up half a dozen more specimens of the newEurema. These he placed with the utmost care in his collecting-box. At noon they saddled up and rode on again. Towards three o’clock they emerged from the hills upon a shallow, open, grassy valley, girt about by bush and mountain scenery. This small valley was ablaze with flowers, and butterflies were very abundant. Getting Jacobus to lead his horse quietly after him, Horace wandered hither and thither among the grass and flowers, every now and again sweeping up some butterfly that took his fancy. Suddenly, as he opened his net to secure a new capture, he uttered an exclamation of intense surprise. “By all that’s entomological!” he cried, looking up with a comical expression at the stolid and uninterested Hottentot boy, “I’ve done it, I’ve done it! I’ve hit upon the old Professor’s new butterfly!”No man could well be more pleased with himself than Horace Maybold at that moment. In ten minutes he had within his box seven or eight more specimens, for the butterfly—the wonderful, the undiscoverableAchraea Parchelli—seemed to be fairly plentiful.“How far are we off Mr Gunton’s place now, Jacobus?” asked Horace.“Nie, vär, nie, Baas,” (Not so far, master), replied the boy in his Dutchpatois. “’Bout one mile, I tink. See, dar kom another Baas!”Horace shaded his eyes and looked. About one hundred and fifty yards off there appeared above the tall grass a curious figure, remarkable for a huge white helmet, loose light coat, and pink face and blue spectacles. A green butterfly net was borne upon the figure’s shoulder. Horace knew in a moment whose was that quaint figure. He gave a soft whistle to himself. It was the Professor.The old gentleman came straight on, and, presently, seeing, within fifty yards, strange people before him, walked up. He stood face to face with Horace Maybold, amazed, aghast, and finally very angry.“Good-morning, Professor,” said that young man. “I’m afraid I’ve stumbled by a sheer accident on your hunting-ground. I am staying with an old schoolfellow thirty miles away, and rode in this direction. I had no idea you were here.”The Professor was a sight to behold. Red as an enraged turkey-cock, streaming with perspiration—for it was a hot afternoon—almost speechless with indignation, he at last blurted into tongue: “So, sir, this is what you have been doing—stealing a march upon me; following me up secretly; defrauding me of the prizes of my own labour and research. I could not have believed it of any member of the Society. The thing is more than unhandsome. It is monstrous! an utterly monstrous proceeding!”Horace attempted to explain matters again. It was useless; he might as well have argued with a buffalo bull at that moment.“Mr Maybold,” retorted the Professor, “the coincidence of your staying in the very locality in which my discovery was made, coupled with the fact that you endeavoured, at the last meeting of the Entomological Society, to extract from me the habitat of this new species, is quite too impossible. I have nothing more to say, for the present.” And the irate old gentleman passed on.Horace felt excessively vexed. Yet he had done no wrong. Perhaps when the old gentleman had come to his senses he would listen to reason.Jacobus now led the way to the farmhouse. It lay only a mile away, and they presently rode up towards thestoep. Two ladies were sitting under the shade of the ample thatched veranda—one was painting, the other reading. Horace could scarcely believe his eyes as he approached. These were his two fellow-passengers of theNorham Castle, Mrs Stacer and Rose Vanning, the latter looking, if possible, more charming than ever. The ladies recognised him in their turn, and rose with a little flutter. Horace jumped from his horse and shook hands with some warmth.“Who on earth,” he said, “could have expected to meet you in these wilds? Iamastonished—and delighted,” he added, with a glance at Rose.Explanations ensued. It seemed that the ladies were the sister and step-daughter of the Professor, who was a widower. They had been engaged by him in a mild conspiracy not to reveal his whereabouts, so fearful was he of his precious butterfly’s habitat being made known to the world; and so, all through the voyage, no mention had been made even of his name. It was his particular whim and request, and here was the mystery at an end. The Professor had moved from the farmhouse in which he had lodged the year before, and had secured quarters in Mr Gunton’s roomy, comfortable ranch, where the ladies had joined him.Horace, who had inwardly chafed at this unexpected turn, had now to explain his awkward rencontre with the Professor. To his great relief, Mrs Stacer and Rose took it much more philosophically than he could have hoped; indeed, they seemed rather amused than otherwise.“But,” said Horace with a rueful face, “the Professor’s in a frantic rage with me. You don’t quite realise that he absolutely discredits my story, and believes I have been playing the spy all along. And upon the top of all this I have a letter to Mr Gunton, and must sleep here somehow for the night. There’s no other accommodation within twenty miles. Why, when the Professor comes back and finds me here, he’ll go out of his mind!”Here Mrs Stacer, good woman that she was, volunteered to put matters straight, for the night at all events. She at once saw Mr Gunton, and explained theimpasseto him; and Horace was comfortably installed, away from the Professor’s room, in the farmer’s own quarters.“Leave my brother to me,” said Mrs Stacer, as she left Horace. “I daresay matters will come right.”At ten o’clock Mrs Stacer came to the door. Mr Gunton rose and went out as she entered. “H’sh!” she said with mock-mystery as she addressed Horace. “I think,” she went on, with a comical little smile, “the Professor begins to think he has done you an injustice. He is amazed at our knowing you, and we have attacked him all the evening, and he is visibly relenting.”“Mrs Stacer,” said Horace warmly, “I can’t thank you sufficiently. I’ve had an inspiration since I saw you. I, too, have discovered, not far from here, a rather good new butterfly—a species hitherto unknown. Can’t I make amends, by sharing my discovery with the Professor? I’ve got specimens here in my box, and there are plenty in a kloof fifteen miles away.”“Why, of course,” answered Mrs Stacer. “It’s the very thing. Your new butterfly will turn the scale I’ll go and tell my brother you have a matter of importance to communicate, and wish to make further explanations. Wait a moment.”In three minutes she returned. “I think it will be all right,” she whispered. “Go and see him. Straight through the passage you will find a door open, on the right. I’ll wait here.”Horace went forward and came to the half-open door. The Professor, who had changed his loose, yellow, alpaca coat for a black one of the same material, sat by a reading-lamp. He wore now his gold-rimmed spectacles, in lieu of the blue “goggles.” He looked clean, and pink, and comfortable, though a trifle severe—the passion of the afternoon had vanished from his face. Horace spoke the first word. “I have again to reiterate Professor, how vexed I am to have disturbed your collecting-ground. I had not the smallest intention of doing it. Indeed, my plans lay farther north. It was the pure accident of meeting my old school-friend, Marley, that led me here. In order to convince you of my sincere regret, I have here a new butterfly—evidently a scarce and unknownEurema—which I discovered a few days since, near here. My discovery is at your service. Here is the butterfly. I trust you will consider it some slight set-off for the vexation I have unwittingly given you.”At sight of the butterfly, which Horace took from his box, the Professor’s eyes gleamed with interest. He took the insect, looked at it very carefully, then returned it.“Mr Maybold,” he said, rising and holding out his hand, “I believe I did you an injustice this afternoon. I lost my temper, and I regret it. I understand from my sister and daughter that they are acquainted with you, and that they were fully aware of your original intention to travel to the Orange River. Your offer of the new butterfly, which is, as you observe, a new and rare species, is very handsome, and I cry quits. I trust I may have the pleasure of seeing you to-morrow at breakfast, and accompanying you to the habitat of your very interesting and remarkable discovery.”Before breakfast next morning there was a very pleasant and even tender meeting between Horace Maybold and Rose Vanning; and, when Mrs Stacer joined them, there was a merry laugh over the adventures of yesterday.After breakfast—they all sat down together, the Professor in his most genial mood—Horace and the old gentleman at once set off for the kloof where the newEuremawas discovered. They returned late in the evening; the Professor had captured a number of specimens, and although fatigued, was triumphantly happy. Horace stayed a week with them after this, with the natural result that at the end of that time he and Rose Vanning were engaged, with the Professor’s entire consent. The new butterfly—which, partly out of compliment to Rose, partly from its own peculiar colouring, was unanimously christenedEurema Rosa—was exhibited by Horace and the Professor jointly and with greatéclatat an early meeting of the Entomological Society.Horace and Rose’s marriage is a very happy one. And, as they both laughingly agree—for the old gentleman often reminds them of the fact—they may thank the Professor’s butterfly (the famousAchraea Parchelli) for the lucky chance that first threw them together.
Quite the most remarkable feature of an April meeting of the Entomological Society in 1880 something was the production, by Professor Parchell, F.Z.S., F.L.S., one of the oldest and most enthusiastic members of the Society, of a new and remarkable species ofAchraeahitherto quite unknown to science. The Professor was radiant and suffused with happiness. He had long been an ardent collector in England and Europe; but only recently had he turned his footsteps to the far-off lands south of the equator. It had been the dream of his life. And now, having lately resigned his chair at Cambridge, at the age of sixty, at his first essay in Cape Colony, a region fairly well-known to entomologists, he had gratified his heart’s desire, and discovered a species.
The new butterfly, which, it appeared, from a paper read by the Professor, had been found in some numbers, but within a very limited area—a mere speck of country—was shown in a carefully constructed case. There were sixteen specimens; and it was settled that the butterfly was to be known to science asAchraea Parchelli, thus perpetuating the Professor and his discovery to the ages yet unborn. The one particularity which marked the insect out from among its fellows was very striking. Upon the upper side of the hind-wings, right in the centre, there appeared a complete triangular space of silver, evenly bordered by circular black markings. This peculiarity, which was shared by male and female alike, was very beautiful and very marked; and the enthusiastic collectors gathered at the Society’s meeting were, as the box of specimens was passed from hand to hand, all delighted with the new treasure. As for the Professor himself, never, except perhaps in that supreme moment when he had discovered within his net this new wonder, had he experienced such a glow of rapture and of triumph.
Amongst the Fellows of the Society met this evening sat Horace Maybold, a good-looking young man of six-and-twenty, who, having some private means, and an unquenchable thirst for the collection of butterflies, spent most of his time in going to and fro upon the earth in search of rare specie, Horace had travelled in many lands, and had made a good many discoveries well-known to his brethren; and quite recently he had turned his attention to theAchraeinae, the very family in which Professor Parchell had made his mark. The new butterfly interested him a good deal. Naturally he at once burned to possess it in his own collection, and, after the meeting broke up, he approached the Professor and sounded him on the subject. In his paper read to the Society that gentleman had rather vaguely, described the habitat of the new species as “in the Eastern Province of Cape Colony, in a small and compact area within fifty miles of the east bank of the Sunday’s River.” But it appeared very quickly that the Professor for the present was unwilling to part with any of his specimens—even for an adequate consideration—or to impart the exact locality in which the species was to be found.
Horace had rather reckoned upon this, but he was none the less a little chagrined at the old gentleman’s closeness.
“No, my dear sir,” had replied the Professor to his inquiries, “I can’t part with any of my specimens, except to the Natural History Museum, to which I intend to present a pair. As for the precise habitat, I intend—ahem!—for the present to reserve that secret to myself. It is a pardonable piece of selfishness—or shall I term it self-preservation?—you, as a collector, must admit I intend to renew my acquaintance with the spot towards the beginning of next winter—that is the summer of the Cape. When I have collected more specimens, I may publish my secret to the world—hardly before.”
Horace looked keenly at the face of the clean, pink and white old gentleman before him. There was no compromise in the set of the firm lips, or the blue eyes beaming pleasantly from behind the gold-rimmed spectacles; and so, with a polite sentence or two on his lips, but with some vexation at his heart, Horace Maybold turned away and went down to his club.
During the rest of that summer Horace was pretty much occupied, yet his memory never relaxed its grip of the Professor and his new butterfly. He had upon his writing-table the coloured plate from a scientific magazine, whereon was depicted that rare species; and as he refreshed his memory with it now and again, he determined more than ever to possess himself of specimens of the original. As far as possible he kept a sharp eye on the Professor’s movements until the middle of September, when, happening to return to town from a few days’ shooting, he ran across the old gentleman in Piccadilly.
“Well, Professor,” said Horace, genially, “how goes the world with you? I suppose you will be leaving England for the Cape again presently?”
“Yes,” returned the old gentleman, who seemed in excellent spirits; “I expect to be sailing early in October. I want to have a fortnight or more in Cape Town at the Museum there. After that I propose proceeding to my old hunting-ground of last year.”
“Where you discovered the newAchraea?” interposed Horace.
“Exactly,” rejoined the old gentleman.
“I quite envy you, Professor,” went on Horace. “I am in two minds about visiting South Africa myself this winter. The Orange River country hasn’t been half ransacked yet, or Kaffraria either, for that matter. I haven’t settled my plans; but I may have a turn at one or the other.”
Now Kaffraria lies not very far to the east of the Professor’s own collecting-ground, that sacred spot which held his great secret yet inviolate. The old gentleman’s face changed perceptibly; a stiffer line or two appeared about his mouth; he looked with some suspicion into Horace’s eyes, and said, rather shortly: “Ah, well! I am told the Orange River is an excellent and untried region. But, entomologically, South Africa upon the wholeispoor. My visits there are mainly for health and change. But I must be getting on; I have much to do. Good-bye, Mr Maybold—good-bye!”
The Professor passed on down St James’s Street, and Horace sauntered along Piccadilly with a smile upon his face. The old gentleman had imparted something of his movements. Should he follow them up? Yes; he must have thatAchraea Parchellisomehow. Hewouldfollow to the Eastern Province in November. It might be a trifle like poaching; but, after all, the world is not a butterfly preserve for the one or two lucky ones. It lies open to every entomologist. And the old man had been so confoundedly close and secret. It would serve him right to discover his sacred treasure and make plain his mystery.
After watching the weekly passenger list inSouth Africafor some time; Horace Maybold noted with interest that Professor Parchell had sailed for Cape Town by a Donald Currie steamer in the first week of October. That fact ascertained, he at once secured a berth in a deck cabin of theNorham Castlefor the first week in November. The chase had begun, and already Horace felt a keen and amusing sense of adventure—adventure in little—springing within him.
After Madeira, when all had found their sea-legs, and the warm weather and smooth ocean appeared, things became very pleasant. Horace was not a man who quickly became intimate or much attached to people; but, almost insensibly, upon this voyage he found himself developing a strong friendship, almost an intimacy, with two ladies: one, Mrs Stacer, a pleasant, comely, middle-aged woman, perhaps nearer fifty than forty; the other, Miss Vanning, young, good-looking, and extremely attractive. The two ladies, who were connected, if not relations, were travelling to Port Elizabeth to stay with friends in that part of the colony—where, exactly, was never quite made clear. Horace found them refined, well-bred, charming women, having many things in common with him; and the trio in a day or two’s time got on swimmingly together.
By the time the line was reached, the vision of Rose Vanning, with her fair, wavy brown hair, good grey eyes, fresh complexion, and open, yet slightly restrained manner, was for ever before the mental ken of Horace May bold. Here, indeed, he told himself, was the typical English girl he had so often set before his mind; fresh, tallish, full of health, alert, vigorous in mind and body, yet a thorough and a perfect woman. On many a warm tropical evening, as they sat together on deck, while the big ship drove her way through the oil-like ocean, sending shoals of flying-fish scudding to right and left of her, the two chatted together, and day by day their intimacy quickened. It was clear to Horace, and it began, too, to dawn upon Mrs Stacer, that Rose Vanning found a more than ordinary pleasure in his presence. By the time they were within a day of Cape Town, Horace had more than half made up his mind. He had gently opened the trenches with Mrs Stacer, who had met him almost half-way, and had obtained permission to call upon them in London—at a house north of Hyde Park, where they were living. At present they knew so little of him and his people, that he felt it would be unfair to push matters further. But he had mentioned Mrs Stacer’s invitation to Rose Vanning.
“I hope, Miss Vanning,” he said, “you won’t quite have forgotten me when I come to see you—let me see—about next May. It’s a very long way off, isn’t it? And people and things change so quickly in these times.” He looked a little anxiously at the girl as he spoke; what he saw reassured him a good deal.
“If you haven’t forgotten us, Mr Maybold,” she said, a pretty flush rising as she spoke, “I’m quite sure we shall remember and be glad to see you. We’ve had such good times together, and I hope you’ll come and see us soon. We shall be home in April at latest, and we shall have, no doubt, heaps of adventures to compare.”
At Cape Town, Horace, after many inquiries, had half settled upon a journey along the Orange River. He had more than one reason for this. Perhaps Rose Vanning’s influence had sharpened his moral sense; who knows? At any rate, he had begun to think it was playing it rather low down upon the Professor, to follow him up and poach his preserves. He could do the Orange River this season, and wait another year for theAchraea Parchelli; by that time the old gentleman would probably have had his fill, and would not mind imparting the secret, if properly approached. And so the Orange River was decided upon, and in three or four days he was to start.
Upon the following evening, however, something happened to alter these plans. Half an hour before dinner, as he was sitting on the pleasantstoep(veranda) of the International Hotel, enjoying a cigarette, a man whose face he seemed to know came up to him and instantly claimed acquaintance. “You remember me, surely, Maybold?” he said. “I was at Marlborough with you—in the same form for three terms.”
Of course Horace remembered him; and they sat at dinner together and had a long yarn far into the night.
The upshot of this meeting was that nothing would satisfy John Marley—“Johnny,” he was always called—but Horace should go round by sea with him to Port Elizabeth, and stop a few weeks at his farm, some little way up-country from that place. When he was tired of that, he could go on by rail from Cradock, and complete his programme on the Orange River.
“If you want butterflies, my boy,” said Johnny in his hearty way, “you shall have lots at my place—tons of them after the rains; and we’ll have some rattling good shooting as well. You can’t be always running about after ‘bugs,’ you know.”
So, next day but one, Horace, little loth, was haled by his friend down to the docks again, and thence round to Port Elizabeth by steamer. From Port Elizabeth they proceeded, partly by rail partly by Cape cart and horses, in a north-easterly direction, until at length, after the best part of a day’s journey through some wild and most beautiful scenery, they drove up late in the evening to a long, low, comfortable farmhouse, shaded by a big verandah, where they were met and welcomed by Marley’s wife and three sturdy children. After allowing his friend a day’s rest, to unpack his kit and get out his gunnery and collecting-boxes, Johnny plunged him into a vortex of sport and hard work. A fortnight had vanished ere Horace could cry off. He had enjoyed it all immensely; but he really must get on with the butterflies, especially if he meant to go north to the Orange River.
Marley pretended to grumble a little at his friend’s desertion of buck-shooting for butterfly-collecting; but he quickly placed at his disposal a sharp Hottentot boy, Jacobus by name, who knew every nook and corner of that vast countryside, and, barring a little laziness, natural to Hottentot blood, proved a perfect treasure to the entomologist. The weather was perfection. Some fine showers had fallen, vegetation had suddenly started into life, and the flowers were everywhere ablaze. The bush was in its glory.
Amid all this regeneration of nature, butterflies and insects were extremely abundant. Horace had a great time of it, and day after day added largely to his collection. One morning, flitting about here and there, he noticed a butterfly that seemed new to him. He quickly had a specimen within his net, and, to his intense satisfaction, found it as he had suspected, a new species. It belonged to the genusEurema, which contains but few species, and somewhat resembledEurema schaeneia(Trimen), a handsome dark-brown and yellow butterfly, with tailed hind-wings. But Horace’s new capture was widely different, in this respect: the whole of the under surface of the wings was suffused with a strong roseate pink, which mingled here and there with the brown, sometimes darker, sometimes lighter in its hue.
Here was a thrilling discovery—a discovery which, as Horace laughingly said to himself, would make old Parchell “sit up” at their Society’s meeting next spring. Horace captured eight more specimens—the butterfly was not too plentiful—and then made for home in an ecstasy of delight.
A few days after this memorable event he set off with Jacobus for a farmhouse thirty miles away, to the owner of which—an English Afrikander—Marley had given him an introduction. As they passed near the kloof where the new butterfly had been discovered, which lay about half-way, Horace off-saddled for an hour, and picked up half a dozen more specimens of the newEurema. These he placed with the utmost care in his collecting-box. At noon they saddled up and rode on again. Towards three o’clock they emerged from the hills upon a shallow, open, grassy valley, girt about by bush and mountain scenery. This small valley was ablaze with flowers, and butterflies were very abundant. Getting Jacobus to lead his horse quietly after him, Horace wandered hither and thither among the grass and flowers, every now and again sweeping up some butterfly that took his fancy. Suddenly, as he opened his net to secure a new capture, he uttered an exclamation of intense surprise. “By all that’s entomological!” he cried, looking up with a comical expression at the stolid and uninterested Hottentot boy, “I’ve done it, I’ve done it! I’ve hit upon the old Professor’s new butterfly!”
No man could well be more pleased with himself than Horace Maybold at that moment. In ten minutes he had within his box seven or eight more specimens, for the butterfly—the wonderful, the undiscoverableAchraea Parchelli—seemed to be fairly plentiful.
“How far are we off Mr Gunton’s place now, Jacobus?” asked Horace.
“Nie, vär, nie, Baas,” (Not so far, master), replied the boy in his Dutchpatois. “’Bout one mile, I tink. See, dar kom another Baas!”
Horace shaded his eyes and looked. About one hundred and fifty yards off there appeared above the tall grass a curious figure, remarkable for a huge white helmet, loose light coat, and pink face and blue spectacles. A green butterfly net was borne upon the figure’s shoulder. Horace knew in a moment whose was that quaint figure. He gave a soft whistle to himself. It was the Professor.
The old gentleman came straight on, and, presently, seeing, within fifty yards, strange people before him, walked up. He stood face to face with Horace Maybold, amazed, aghast, and finally very angry.
“Good-morning, Professor,” said that young man. “I’m afraid I’ve stumbled by a sheer accident on your hunting-ground. I am staying with an old schoolfellow thirty miles away, and rode in this direction. I had no idea you were here.”
The Professor was a sight to behold. Red as an enraged turkey-cock, streaming with perspiration—for it was a hot afternoon—almost speechless with indignation, he at last blurted into tongue: “So, sir, this is what you have been doing—stealing a march upon me; following me up secretly; defrauding me of the prizes of my own labour and research. I could not have believed it of any member of the Society. The thing is more than unhandsome. It is monstrous! an utterly monstrous proceeding!”
Horace attempted to explain matters again. It was useless; he might as well have argued with a buffalo bull at that moment.
“Mr Maybold,” retorted the Professor, “the coincidence of your staying in the very locality in which my discovery was made, coupled with the fact that you endeavoured, at the last meeting of the Entomological Society, to extract from me the habitat of this new species, is quite too impossible. I have nothing more to say, for the present.” And the irate old gentleman passed on.
Horace felt excessively vexed. Yet he had done no wrong. Perhaps when the old gentleman had come to his senses he would listen to reason.
Jacobus now led the way to the farmhouse. It lay only a mile away, and they presently rode up towards thestoep. Two ladies were sitting under the shade of the ample thatched veranda—one was painting, the other reading. Horace could scarcely believe his eyes as he approached. These were his two fellow-passengers of theNorham Castle, Mrs Stacer and Rose Vanning, the latter looking, if possible, more charming than ever. The ladies recognised him in their turn, and rose with a little flutter. Horace jumped from his horse and shook hands with some warmth.
“Who on earth,” he said, “could have expected to meet you in these wilds? Iamastonished—and delighted,” he added, with a glance at Rose.
Explanations ensued. It seemed that the ladies were the sister and step-daughter of the Professor, who was a widower. They had been engaged by him in a mild conspiracy not to reveal his whereabouts, so fearful was he of his precious butterfly’s habitat being made known to the world; and so, all through the voyage, no mention had been made even of his name. It was his particular whim and request, and here was the mystery at an end. The Professor had moved from the farmhouse in which he had lodged the year before, and had secured quarters in Mr Gunton’s roomy, comfortable ranch, where the ladies had joined him.
Horace, who had inwardly chafed at this unexpected turn, had now to explain his awkward rencontre with the Professor. To his great relief, Mrs Stacer and Rose took it much more philosophically than he could have hoped; indeed, they seemed rather amused than otherwise.
“But,” said Horace with a rueful face, “the Professor’s in a frantic rage with me. You don’t quite realise that he absolutely discredits my story, and believes I have been playing the spy all along. And upon the top of all this I have a letter to Mr Gunton, and must sleep here somehow for the night. There’s no other accommodation within twenty miles. Why, when the Professor comes back and finds me here, he’ll go out of his mind!”
Here Mrs Stacer, good woman that she was, volunteered to put matters straight, for the night at all events. She at once saw Mr Gunton, and explained theimpasseto him; and Horace was comfortably installed, away from the Professor’s room, in the farmer’s own quarters.
“Leave my brother to me,” said Mrs Stacer, as she left Horace. “I daresay matters will come right.”
At ten o’clock Mrs Stacer came to the door. Mr Gunton rose and went out as she entered. “H’sh!” she said with mock-mystery as she addressed Horace. “I think,” she went on, with a comical little smile, “the Professor begins to think he has done you an injustice. He is amazed at our knowing you, and we have attacked him all the evening, and he is visibly relenting.”
“Mrs Stacer,” said Horace warmly, “I can’t thank you sufficiently. I’ve had an inspiration since I saw you. I, too, have discovered, not far from here, a rather good new butterfly—a species hitherto unknown. Can’t I make amends, by sharing my discovery with the Professor? I’ve got specimens here in my box, and there are plenty in a kloof fifteen miles away.”
“Why, of course,” answered Mrs Stacer. “It’s the very thing. Your new butterfly will turn the scale I’ll go and tell my brother you have a matter of importance to communicate, and wish to make further explanations. Wait a moment.”
In three minutes she returned. “I think it will be all right,” she whispered. “Go and see him. Straight through the passage you will find a door open, on the right. I’ll wait here.”
Horace went forward and came to the half-open door. The Professor, who had changed his loose, yellow, alpaca coat for a black one of the same material, sat by a reading-lamp. He wore now his gold-rimmed spectacles, in lieu of the blue “goggles.” He looked clean, and pink, and comfortable, though a trifle severe—the passion of the afternoon had vanished from his face. Horace spoke the first word. “I have again to reiterate Professor, how vexed I am to have disturbed your collecting-ground. I had not the smallest intention of doing it. Indeed, my plans lay farther north. It was the pure accident of meeting my old school-friend, Marley, that led me here. In order to convince you of my sincere regret, I have here a new butterfly—evidently a scarce and unknownEurema—which I discovered a few days since, near here. My discovery is at your service. Here is the butterfly. I trust you will consider it some slight set-off for the vexation I have unwittingly given you.”
At sight of the butterfly, which Horace took from his box, the Professor’s eyes gleamed with interest. He took the insect, looked at it very carefully, then returned it.
“Mr Maybold,” he said, rising and holding out his hand, “I believe I did you an injustice this afternoon. I lost my temper, and I regret it. I understand from my sister and daughter that they are acquainted with you, and that they were fully aware of your original intention to travel to the Orange River. Your offer of the new butterfly, which is, as you observe, a new and rare species, is very handsome, and I cry quits. I trust I may have the pleasure of seeing you to-morrow at breakfast, and accompanying you to the habitat of your very interesting and remarkable discovery.”
Before breakfast next morning there was a very pleasant and even tender meeting between Horace Maybold and Rose Vanning; and, when Mrs Stacer joined them, there was a merry laugh over the adventures of yesterday.
After breakfast—they all sat down together, the Professor in his most genial mood—Horace and the old gentleman at once set off for the kloof where the newEuremawas discovered. They returned late in the evening; the Professor had captured a number of specimens, and although fatigued, was triumphantly happy. Horace stayed a week with them after this, with the natural result that at the end of that time he and Rose Vanning were engaged, with the Professor’s entire consent. The new butterfly—which, partly out of compliment to Rose, partly from its own peculiar colouring, was unanimously christenedEurema Rosa—was exhibited by Horace and the Professor jointly and with greatéclatat an early meeting of the Entomological Society.
Horace and Rose’s marriage is a very happy one. And, as they both laughingly agree—for the old gentleman often reminds them of the fact—they may thank the Professor’s butterfly (the famousAchraea Parchelli) for the lucky chance that first threw them together.