Volume One—Chapter Twenty.

Volume One—Chapter Twenty.One Golden Day.The clouds were parting and revealing patches of blue through their rifts as Claverton reached home, and with the returning sunshine his spirits revived. It was going to be a lovely day, and he would have Lilian all to himself for two whole hours that morning, for he was to take her over to Thirlestane, Naylor’s place, and return with the rest of the party in the afternoon.It was just breakfast-time, and Lilian entered at the same time as himself. Her face looked worn and anxious, as if not much sleep had fallen to her lot, and though he would have cut off his right hand to spare her the lightest anxiety, yet he could not feel guiltless of a sense of consolation that she should have sorrowed with him and for him. The voice of Mr Brathwaite recalled him to himself with a start.“Well, Arthur; where did you go this morning?”“Down to Umgiswe’s.”“Was his count all right?”“Yes. Which is extraordinary, seeing that he had been entertaining visitors,” and he narrated the presence there of the three strange Kafirs.“Did you find out the big fellow’s name?” asked Mr Brathwaite.“Yes. It was Nxabahlana. Do you know him? He looked as if he held the right of succession to the paramount chieftainship of Kafirland.”“Nxabahlana? Oh, yes, I know him,” replied the old man. “He’s a kind of sub-chief, and a relation of Sandili’s. One of the greatest blackguards that ever stepped. Good thing you turned them out; they were up to no good, that much is certain.”“A chief!” exclaimed Lilian, raising her eyes, “Ishouldlike to see a real Kafir chief.”“Would you?” said Claverton. “I wish I had known that; you should have seen him. I’d have brought him here.”The others laughed, thinking he was joking, but Lilian knew that he meant it, every word.“Ah, but,” she said in a repentant tone, “you couldn’t have captured him, there were three of them; at least I mean—it would not have been worth the risk.”Claverton laughed quietly.“No such severe measures would have been necessary. If I had promised his chieftainship a glass of grog and an old hat, he would have come trundling up here with an alacrity that would surprise you.”“Really? That quite takes away from the poetry of the idea. I thought these savage chiefs were very proud.”“They are proud enough just as far as it suits them to be so—inasmuch as they affect to look upon us as dust beneath their feet; but they will condescend to accept anything we may think proper to give them, whether it be a ‘tickey’ (threepence) or a pair of old boots. In fact Jack Kafir, of whatever degree, has the bump of acquisitiveness very highly developed, I assure you. Hullo! who’s this?”For the door opened and a Dutchman entered—the same who witnessed poor Allen’s immersion at the taking out of the bees’ nest. A good-humoured grin was on his stolid countenance, which looked suggestively warm, and perhaps not too clean, and his beady black eyes sparkled at the prospect of a good feed. His corduroy trousers were tucked into a pair of top boots, and asjambok, or raw-hide whip, dangled from his wrist. Not until he had gone all round, extending a limp, moist paw to each, did it occur to him to remove his hat.“Autre pays, autre moeurs,” murmured Claverton in response to a charming little grimace of amusement which Lilian flashed at him from across the table, in reference to the new arrival.A seat was found for the Dutchman, and a well-garnished plate, and being provided with a knife and fork he began to make voracious play with the same. Then having removed the edge of a very exuberant appetite, he raised his head from the platter and waxed talkative.“Oom Walter is well?”“Ja. Pretty so so.”“And Mrs Brathwaite?”“Also.”“Det is goed,” and then having given a like satisfactory account of hisvrouwandkindersthe Boer informed them that he was on his way to Thirlestane, with the object of purchasing some oxen from Naylor.“Claverton’s going over there this morning,” said Mr Brathwaite, unthinkingly. “You can go over with him.”“So,” said the Dutchman with a nod of approval. “We will ride together.”This didn’t meet Claverton’s wishes at all.“I’m afraid not,” he said. “Sticks is rather lame, and I shall have to send for my other horse. They’ll hardly find him till the afternoon—if then. It won’t be worth Botha’s while to wait.”“No. I don’t think it will,” said good-natured Mrs Brathwaite, who had taken in the situation at a glance. Lilian, not understanding the Boer dialect, was an unconscious auditor of what was going on.Breakfast over, the Dutchman sat for about half an hour outside, smoking his pipe and talking over the usual subjects with his host—sheep, ostriches, the state of the country, how much longer they could do without rain, and so on. Then, saddling up his small, rough-looking nag, he shook hands all round and departed, thoroughly content with himself and all the world.“What a queer fellow!” said Lilian, gazing after the awkward, receding figure of their late guest, who, with his feet jammed to the heels in the stirrups, was shuffling leisurely along, pipe in mouth.“Yes, isn’t he?” answered Claverton. “But he’s a fair specimen of the typical Boer. Washes three times a year, sleeps in his clothes, and wears his hat in the house.”“Lilian, dear; hadn’t you better get ready to start?” suggested Mrs Brathwaite.“I was just thinking the same,” said Claverton; “but,” he added, in a lower tone, “I couldn’t find it in my conscience to hasten even such a temporary separation, and yet I was racked with apprehension lest some other wayfarer should turn up and make a third.”She gave him a bright smile as she flitted indoors; then he, having got into his riding-gear, went round to the stable and simply made Jan the Hottentot groom’s life a burden to him over the caparisoning of Lilian’s steed. This bit was too sharp—that too soft—those reins were too hard for the hands—and what the devil did he mean by leaving those two specks of rust on the stirrup-iron? Jan and his deputy—an impish-looking little bushman—couldn’t make it out at all; Baas Clav’ton was usually so easy-going, and now here he was fidgeting worse than the “sir” in the long boots (Allen).Then Lilian came out, looking lovely in her well-fitting blue habit. There was just a little air of timidity about her which was inexpressibly charming, as Claverton put her into the saddle. She was not a bold horsewoman, she confessed. She was ashamed to say that if anything she was just a wee bit afraid every time she mounted a horse. Nevertheless she sat beautifully, and the somewhat timid hand held the reins as gracefully if not quite as firmly as that of any hard-riding Amazon. To-day she was mounted on a handsome old bay horse of Mr Brathwaite’s, who carried his head well, had a firm, easy walk, and was as safe as a church, while Claverton rode a dark chestnut just flecked with white, a fine, spirited animal which he had bought to supplement the faithful “Sticks,” using the latter for the rougher kinds of work.“Do you know, nothing but my unblushing mendacity kept that seedy Dutchman from inflicting himself upon our ride?” remarked Claverton, when they had started; and he told her of his little subterfuge.“Shocking! You had no right to tell such a story,” she answered, with a laugh.“Hadn’t I? Which would have been best—the lie or the Dutchman? ‘Of the two evils,’ you know, and I thought the lie the least. Perhaps you would have preferred the Dutchman?”“No, I would not. But I think—well, I think—you did about the very best thing you could have done,” she replied, breaking into a silvery laugh. “But don’t take that as any encouragement to persevere in the art. It’s a dangerous one, and I believe you are quite an adept in it already. In fact, I’ve heard you tell one or two shocking fibs myself.”“All’s fair in love and war.” Then noting the look which stole over her face he wished the quotation unsaid. “But I promise you I won’t indulge in mendacity any more than I can help.”“You must not do it at all. Seriously, it isn’t right.”“Except as a choice of evils. How would society get on without its mendacities?”“Never mind about society,” retorted Lilian, brushing aside an inconvenient argument in right womanly fashion. “And now promise you’ll do what I’m going to ask you.”“Oh, cheerfully.”“I’m going to set you a penance.”“Consider it performed. But what is it?”“Well, the next time a choice of evils is offered you, you are to choose the one which does not involve romancing.”“That must depend upon its nature.”“Oh, you promised!”“So I did, and so did Herod, and look what came of it.”“Never mind about Herod,” was the laughing reply. “I have got you at a disadvantage, and I mean to keep you at it. Look, are not those Kafirs picturesque, in their red blankets, filing through the dark green of the bush?” she broke off, pointing out half-a-dozen ochre-painted beings who were crossing the valley some distance from them. They were walking in single file, and every now and then one would half stop and throw a remark over his shoulder in a deep bass tone. Their necklaces of jackals’ teeth showed white against their red bodies, which glistened in the sun, and as they marched along, head erect and with their kerries over their shoulders, they certainly did look picturesque.“Yes, and do you notice how clear the air is? I can make out nearly every word those fellows are saying,” answered Claverton.“Can you really? What are they talking about?”“What are they talking about? Now look at them. The noble savage on his native heath, looking too, as if it actually did belong to him, striding with free and independent bearing, proud and scornful in mien. You think they are talking of war and tribal greatness, and the extermination of the hated white man, and such-like lofty and ambitious schemes? Nothing of the sort. One fellow is narrating how he got a thorn in his right heel, and how badly his brother extracted it for him, while three of the others are all trying to say at once what a fool the brother was, and that they could have done it much better.”Lilian broke into a peal of laughter. “How absurd you are! You have quite taken the poetry out of them, and now they look like a very commonplace lot of beings. But is that really what they were saying?”“It is, upon my word. To see a lot of Kafirs talking you would think they were letting off a stream of oratory, what with all their gesticulation and modulation of voice. In nine cases out of ten they are discussing the veriest trivialities.”“I’m not sure that I’m glad I know that. It spoils the romance of the thing. I shan’t look at them with the same interest.”“You are given to idealisation, I see,” he said. “It is a delightful pastime, and I must not do anything to shock it. But, look! That, at all events, is entirely free from the commonplace.”They had reached the brow of an eminence, and before them lay unfolded a panorama which brought a flush of delight to Lilian’s face. Upland and valley lay sleeping in the golden sunshine, a rolling expanse of verdure, now open and grassy, now covered with thick bush, or dotted here and there with feathery mimosas. Wave upon wave of rise and swell, there seemed no end to the wide beautiful plains; and the eye wandered on, over and over it, drinking in a new delight in the far-seeing vision, then turning to refresh itself in the grand mountain chain which bounded its range in front. Stretching afar, in a hundred and fifty miles of stately crescent, rose those lofty mountains with their sunny slopes and beetling cliffs, and black forest-clad sides seen through the dim uncertainty of the summer haze; while, towering above the rest, the Great Winterberg raised his weather-beaten crest to the cloudless bine. The thatch and white walls of a farmhouse or two, visible here and there in the distance, redeemed the spectacle from the utter wildness of a newly-trodden land, but on the other hand added to the peaceful solemnity of the scene. Hard by, the air resounded with the low hum of bees busily gathering their stores from the blossoming sprays of a neighbouring clump of bush; spreuws whistled, and a dainty little sugar-bird—the humming-bird of Southern Africa—flitted across the path, his painted plumage glittering in the sun. Down in the valley two or three pairs of blue cranes roamed about picking in the grass, and every now and then their strange rasping note floated not unmelodiously through the calm.Lilian, in her intense love of the beautiful, could not restrain a cry of delight as she gazed upon the splendid panorama before them. The exhilarating exercise and the warm balminess of the air had brought the loveliest flush into her clear olive cheeks, and as she sat there lightly reining in her horse, while the sweet eyes sparkled and dilated and a witching smile carved the usually sad mouth, her companion thought he had never seen such a picture in his life.“A lovely background with a lovelier central figure,” he murmured. “Look at it well,” he added. “Take it all in thoroughly, now; it will never look the same again. Nothing ever strikes us as it does the first time.”She looked half round at him. “Am I delaying you?”“Delayingme? Good heavens!” is all the reply he can make just then. Often in the time to come will he remember this day, this moment. Often will he stand in imagination as he does now with one arm over the pommel of his saddle, watching the radiant face of this girl in its almost divine beauty, set in entranced contemplation of the glorious landscape all gleaming with purple and gold in the flooding sunshine. And remembering it he will feel as though he had lost Heaven. A dull, gnawing pain tugs at his heart as a forecast of the future runs darkly through him, but with a great effort he thrusts it aside; he will live in the present, and sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.“What are those, down there?” cried Lilian. “Bucks of some sort?”“Yes. Springbok. There are a few on this side of the place.”Some two dozen of the graceful creatures were trotting leisurely along on the slope below them. They were near enough for the dark stripe upon their shining sides to be plainly discernible, as also the rings on their black curved horns, as they kept turning their heads to gaze inquiringly at their human observers.“How pretty they are!” said Lilian. “We are seeing ever so many queer things to-day, and this beautiful country. Do you know, I am thoroughly enjoying this ride.”“Are you? I wish it might last for ever.”His face wears the same look of longing desperation which it wore in the starlight, while they stood by the pool. Quickly the gladness fades from hers as a light that has gone out. She thinks how selfish she is to throw her joyousness at him thus, while his heart is aching for love of her.“Hush!” she says, in a low compassionate tone. “Remember our compact.”Claverton dare not trust himself to look at her. His eyes are fixed on the hazy slopes of the far-off mountains, whose green and purple sides he scarcely so much as sees. For some minutes neither speaks. Then with a quick restless sigh he throws himself into the saddle.“You are right,” he says, huskily. “It is I who am weak; weak as water. Only this once. I will not transgress again.”They resumed their way. The springboks, startled by the sudden move forward, bounded off. On the brow of the rise, several of them began leaping high into the air, with all four feet off the ground together, and their bodies in the form of a semicircle. Being in relief against the sky, the effect was not a little bizarre.“What ridiculous creatures!” said Lilian, watching them. “I never saw such contortions.”“Yes, they are vindicating their name,” said her companion, tranquilly. He had recovered his composure, and was thankful for this diversion.Cresting the next ridge they came suddenly upon a couple of advancing horsemen, heavy-faced, lumbering-looking fellows, their complexions tanned to the colour of brickdust, and it needed but a glance at their general untidiness, and seedy get-up, to pronounce upon their nationality.They stopped and shook hands with Claverton, doffing their greasy hats to his companion, at sight of whom even their wooden countenances showed signs of animation. A few commonplace questions and answers were exchanged, then one of the Boers, glancing at Lilian, asked with the freedom of speech customary among that delightfully primitive people: “Is that your wife?”He answered without moving a muscle, and enlightened them. They were only ignorant brutes, he reasoned, half savages almost; yet just then, the question had come upon him with a kind of shock. He was thankful that Lilian had not understood the conversation.“I really must learn Dutch,” she said. “It isn’t nearly such an inviting tongue as the full melodious flow of the Kafir language; but far more useful, I should think. Everybody seems to speak it.”“Yes, it’s the regular go-between jargon here. Very few even of the frontier people speak Kafir, and not one Kafir in five hundred can talk English, hence the necessity of a go-between. Look! There’s our destination.”They had reached the brow of one of those long rolling undulations which formed a leading feature in the landscape, and on the rise opposite stood a large single-storeyed house, with an iron roof and deep verandah. A block of out-buildings adjoined, and several spacious enclosures sloped down into the hollow; but save for a few tall blue gums overshadowing the house, the surroundings were destitute of trees.“Ah, you’ve found your way over to us at last,” said Emily Naylor, who with Laura Brathwaite had come out on the stoep to meet Lilian. “So glad to see you. Was it very hot, riding? You must be tired.”“Oh, no,” answered Lilian, “the air was delightful, and the view—I never saw anything so perfect;” and she turned to look again at the wide, sweeping landscape stretching away in front.“Yes; it’s very pretty,” said her hostess. “It is not so pretty here as at Seringa Vale, because we have no trees, but the look-out is much wider. But come inside and sit down, or shall we sit out here? You must be tired after your ride.”“I’m not though, really. And you must not make me out an invalid,” answered Lilian, with a smile. “I’m far from that.”“Then come and see the young ostriches.”Lilian readily assented, and the whole party moved thither accordingly.“Well, Miss Laura, you’re looking all the better for your change of air; in fact, blooming,” remarked Claverton, who was walking beside her. “By the way, where’s the twin?”“Ethel? Oh, she’s down at the ostrich enclosure, where we are going. Mr Allen is there, too, and Will Jeffreys.”“AliasScowling Will. So he’s here, is he?”“Yes. But I can’t return you the compliment you just paid me. You look as if you had been up all night for a week,” answered Laura, with a spice of demure malice.“Oh, don’t make personal remarks; it’s rude,” murmured Claverton, languidly.“Ha—ha,” struck in Naylor. “Claverton’s been getting on the spree, I expect, now that you two are not there to keep him in order. And now here we are,” he went on, as they arrived at an improvised yard some twenty feet square, wherein a number of little oval-shaped woolly things were running about. “They are strong little beggars, not a seedy one among the lot.”They had not been long hatched, and as they scuttled about, stopping occasionally to peck at the chopped lucerne strewn on the ground, they were just the size and shape of the parent egg, plus legs and a neck. Naylor picked one of them up.“You’d never think that this little chap in less than a year’s time would be able to kick a fellow into the middle of next week, would you?” he said, showing it to Lilian.“No, indeed,” replied she, stroking the little creature’s glossy brown neck, and passing her fingers through the thick coating of hair-like feathers like the soft quills of the porcupine, which covered its back. “What dear little things they are. They ought always to keep small.”“Oho!” laughed Naylor. “Bad look out for those who farm them, if they did. You wouldn’t get much for a plucking off this little beggar, for instance.”“Of course I didn’t mean that,” she explained. “I meant that it was a pity such pretty little things should grow up big, and ugly, and vicious.”“It’s a good thing sometimes that they are vicious,” said Naylor. “It keeps the niggers from going into the enclosures and stealing the eggs, and even plucking the birds. They are taking to that already.”“Are they not too much afraid of them?”“Not always. Look at those two black chaps in yonder camp. They are four-year-old birds, and the nigger isn’t born who’d go in and pluck them. Look, you can see them both now,” added Naylor, pointing out a couple of black moving balls, many hundred yards off, in the middle of their enclosures.“It is all very interesting,” exclaimed Lilian, half to herself, gazing around. Far away on the sunlit plains a herd of cattle was lazily moving; down by the dam in the hollow, whose glassy waters shone like burnished silver in the midday heat, stood a few horses, recently turned out of the kraal, swishing the flies with their tails, or scratching each other’s backs with their teeth, while in the ostrich “camps,” whose long, low walls ran up the slope, the great bipeds stalked majestically about, pecking at the herbage on the ground, or, with head erect and neck distended, looked and listened suspiciously, equally ready for a feed of corn or for an intruder. All seemed to tell of peace, and sunshine, and prosperity.“How you must enjoy your life in this beautiful country!” she went on.Naylor was hugely gratified. Subsequently he took occasion to remark to his wife that Lilian Strange was the nicest and the most sensible girl he had ever seen. “Why doesn’t Claverton cut in for her?” added the blunt, jovial fellow, in his free-and-easy way. “Then they could get hold of one of these places round here. He’s a fool if he doesn’t.” To which his wife answered, with a provoking smile of superior knowledge, that she supposed most people knew their own business best.Now, however, he looked pleased. “Well, yes; we’ve been brought up in it, you see, and shouldn’t be happy in any other. But I should have thought that you, coming out from England, would have found it rather slow. Perhaps you haven’t had time to, though, as yet.”“You mean that the novelty hasn’t worn off yet? No more it has; but even when it did, that would make but little difference. There is a charm about this beautiful country, with its solitudes, its grand mountains, and rolling plains, and wild associations, which, so far from becoming tame, would grow upon one. And the climate, too, is perfect.”Naylor laughed diffidently. “Yes; but there’s another side to that picture. How about bad seasons, and drought, and war, and locusts, and stock-lifting, and so on? It isn’t all fun here on the frontier.”“Now, I won’t be disenchanted,” she retorted, with a bright smile. “You must not try and spoil the picture I have drawn.”“Then I won’t. Hallo, Ethel! We’ve been looking for you,” he added, turning as he, for the first time, discovered she had joined them. “Here’s Miss Strange prepared to swear by the frontier—in fact, she has done so already.”“Yes?” said Ethel, coming forward to greet Lilian; and Claverton could not help contrasting the two as they stood together: the one with her soft, dark, winning beauty, the lovely eyes never losing for a moment their serene composure; the other, bright, laughing, and golden, the full red lips ever ready to curl in mischief-loving jest or mocking retort, and hair like a rippling sunbeam. Yet nine men out of ten would probably have awarded the palm to Ethel. “Yes?” she said, and, in her heart of hearts, added, “and with her own reasons.” She did not feel very cordially towards Lilian just then.“She says it’s perfect, all round,” went on Naylor—“a young Paradise.”“I don’t know,” said Ethel. “I shouldn’t like to stay on the frontier all the year round. One would miss the balls and theatre in Cape Town.”“Aha!” laughed Emily, “Ethel is still intent on slaughter. She made such havoc last session; ever so many poor fellows threw themselves off the cliffs on Table Mountain on her account; how many was it, Ethel—twenty-five?—that she had to be spirited away in the night for fear of the vengeance of their bereaved mammas.”“Call it fifty while you’re about it,” she answered. “How awfully hot it has become!”This served as a pretext for a move indoors, which was made accordingly.“So you’re all determined to go back this evening,” said Naylor, as they sat in the verandah after dinner.“I think we must,” answered Ethel; “aunt will think we are never coming back.”Hicks, who at the other end of the verandah was “assisting” Laura to play with the children—these having finished their morning’s lessons, had invaded the party—pricked up his ears and looked rueful in advance. If they were persuaded to stay, he would have to go anyhow; but Ethel was firm, and he breathed freely again.“But, Claverton, you and Miss Strange might stop—to-night, at any rate,” persisted Naylor.It was Ethel’s turn to feel apprehensive. She had schooled herself into accepting the situation, and accepting it patiently. The strife had been a hard one, and she had suffered in it—suffered acutely, but she had conquered. Yet the struggle had not been won in a moment, and it had left its traces; but she seemed not to show them; she was a trifle graver, and more subdued in manner, that was all. A few days ago she had longed, with an intense longing, to get away—away from the sound of his voice, from the glance of his eyes; yet now that it is a question as to whether they shall return without him, her heart beats quick, and she seems to hang upon the verdict which they are all discussing so calmly.“I don’t think we can to-day, Naylor,” answered Claverton, a glance at Lilian having satisfied him that she did not favour the scheme.“But look here,” Naylor was beginning, when his wife cut him short.“Why shouldn’t we inspan and go back with them, Ned? We can leave Seringa Vale again before breakfast if you like, and there’s something I want to see mother about.”“All right, we’ll do that. Don’t you think Seringa Vale is rather a good name for a place, Miss Strange?”“Yes—so pretty,” answered Lilian; “it’s a poem in itself.”“How do you like Thirlestane?”“I like it, too. Did you name it?”“Yes,” replied Naylor, “it’s called after a small place my grandfather had in England. Its original name is a Dutch one—Uitkyk, a look-out; but Thirlestane’s better thanUitkyk, isn’t it?”“Jack Armitage calls it ‘Oatcake’ even to this day,” put in Claverton.Suddenly, a loud booming noise came from one of the enclosures. All looked in that direction. The great ostrich was plainly visible, his neck inflated to six times its size as he emitted his deep call, volleying it out in heavy booms, three at a time.“Fancy an ostrich making such a row as that! You wouldn’t have thought it possible, would you, Miss Strange?” said Gough, the tutor. He had joined the party at dinner-time, when school was over.“I don’t think I should,” answered Lilian. “The first time I heard it, I was so frightened. It was at Seringa Vale. I was lying awake at night, and this great booming sounded so awful in the dead of night. I hadn’t a notion what it was; the first thing I thought of was some wild beast.”“A lion, I suppose,” said Naylor.“I think the whole of the Zoological Gardens ran through my vivid imagination. How Mr Brathwaite laughed when I told him about it next morning! Yet I was terribly frightened.”“No wonder,” said Claverton. “It’s a precious uncanny sort of row to strike up in the middle of the night, especially when you don’t know where it comes from, or what it’s all about.”It was now voted time to be getting the horses in. This served as a signal for a general break-up, the masculine element of the party making towards the stable, or the enclosure, where some manoeuvring was needed, as we have seen, to obtain possession of the requisite steeds without exciting the wrath of the autocratic biped who reigned there.Claverton having, as before, submitted Lilian’s steed and its gear to a rigid examination, now whisking a speck of dust off the saddle, or letting down a link of the curb-chain and readjusting it, assisted her to mount.“Wish that fool would go on,” he muttered savagely, referring to Allen, whose ancient screw was mooning along with a kind of crop-the-grass gait. The rest of the party were on ahead. “He needn’t wait for us,” and flinging himself on his spirited chestnut he bade the groom let go the reins. The fine animal tossed his head and sidled and champed his bit as he felt himself free; free yet not free, for his rider was a consummate horseman and had him perfectly in hand.Lilian laughed. “Poor fellow,” she said. “Do you know, I sometimes feel so sorry for him. You all chaff him dreadfully and—Oh!”The last exclamation is one of alarm, for at that moment a troop of ostriches—young ten-month-old birds—having deserted its herd in one of those stampedes to which these idiotic bipeds are so liable, whirls past them, with wings outstretched and snowy plumes sparkling in the sun, and Lilian’s steed, which has not yet become quite accustomed to the gigantic fowls, shows signs of restiveness.“Don’t be frightened—darling. You’re quite safe,” says her escort, noting the scared look in her face, as the old horse tugs at his bridle and snorts and plunges a little. “He’ll be perfectly quiet in half a minute.”He is so close beside her all the time, and speaks in such a reassuring tone that her alarm subsides, and the old steed drops into his normal steadiness as though half ashamed of himself.“Are you not utterly disgusted with such a coward?” says she, with a faint apologetic laugh. “I ought to have enjoyed the affair as a good opportunity for showing off, oughtn’t I?”“One must show on before showing off. I wouldn’t have you anything but timid on board a horse for the world, except for your own sake. It suits you to perfection.”He is in earnest. These oft-recurring little alarms of hers are so captivating in their pure unaffectedness, so womanly; and, withal, the sense of protection imparted to himself is delicious. And if she is at times somewhat shrinking, as at present, even that lends an additional attraction to her delicate refinement.“Every one is not an Amazon, thank heaven,” he continued, “and you will soon be as much at home on horseback as in a chair. We will have a lot of practice. Besides, you know, lately you have not been very well, and that is calculated to unnerve you. We will do our best to set you up thoroughly—while—you are here.” He tried to speak firmly, but it was of no use, that tell-tale tremor shook his voice over the last four words, for they conjured up a picture of when she should be no longer “here,” and he dared not think of it. At present he would thrust the thought far from him.They had now overtaken Allen, and were obliged to shape the conversation accordingly. “Shall we canter on a little?” suggested Claverton. “The rest are a good way ahead.”Lilian acquiesced, and their steeds bounded along the grassy slopes at an easy elastic canter, but Allen’s sorry screw finding a difficulty in keeping pace with the long stride of the well-bred horses, that disconsolate youth soon dropped behind.“Here is our panorama again,” said Claverton, reining in on the top of the hill, whence they had enjoyed the view that morning.“It looks different already. This golden light sheds a rare peacefulness—an evening repose—upon it, which is perfectly enchanting. It is hard to determine, but of the two I think I preferred it this morning. There was an exhilaration in the very air that made one feel the pleasure of merely living.”“I liked it best this morning, too,” he answered gravely. Then all the day was before him—so many hours withher. Now they had come—never to return.

The clouds were parting and revealing patches of blue through their rifts as Claverton reached home, and with the returning sunshine his spirits revived. It was going to be a lovely day, and he would have Lilian all to himself for two whole hours that morning, for he was to take her over to Thirlestane, Naylor’s place, and return with the rest of the party in the afternoon.

It was just breakfast-time, and Lilian entered at the same time as himself. Her face looked worn and anxious, as if not much sleep had fallen to her lot, and though he would have cut off his right hand to spare her the lightest anxiety, yet he could not feel guiltless of a sense of consolation that she should have sorrowed with him and for him. The voice of Mr Brathwaite recalled him to himself with a start.

“Well, Arthur; where did you go this morning?”

“Down to Umgiswe’s.”

“Was his count all right?”

“Yes. Which is extraordinary, seeing that he had been entertaining visitors,” and he narrated the presence there of the three strange Kafirs.

“Did you find out the big fellow’s name?” asked Mr Brathwaite.

“Yes. It was Nxabahlana. Do you know him? He looked as if he held the right of succession to the paramount chieftainship of Kafirland.”

“Nxabahlana? Oh, yes, I know him,” replied the old man. “He’s a kind of sub-chief, and a relation of Sandili’s. One of the greatest blackguards that ever stepped. Good thing you turned them out; they were up to no good, that much is certain.”

“A chief!” exclaimed Lilian, raising her eyes, “Ishouldlike to see a real Kafir chief.”

“Would you?” said Claverton. “I wish I had known that; you should have seen him. I’d have brought him here.”

The others laughed, thinking he was joking, but Lilian knew that he meant it, every word.

“Ah, but,” she said in a repentant tone, “you couldn’t have captured him, there were three of them; at least I mean—it would not have been worth the risk.”

Claverton laughed quietly.

“No such severe measures would have been necessary. If I had promised his chieftainship a glass of grog and an old hat, he would have come trundling up here with an alacrity that would surprise you.”

“Really? That quite takes away from the poetry of the idea. I thought these savage chiefs were very proud.”

“They are proud enough just as far as it suits them to be so—inasmuch as they affect to look upon us as dust beneath their feet; but they will condescend to accept anything we may think proper to give them, whether it be a ‘tickey’ (threepence) or a pair of old boots. In fact Jack Kafir, of whatever degree, has the bump of acquisitiveness very highly developed, I assure you. Hullo! who’s this?”

For the door opened and a Dutchman entered—the same who witnessed poor Allen’s immersion at the taking out of the bees’ nest. A good-humoured grin was on his stolid countenance, which looked suggestively warm, and perhaps not too clean, and his beady black eyes sparkled at the prospect of a good feed. His corduroy trousers were tucked into a pair of top boots, and asjambok, or raw-hide whip, dangled from his wrist. Not until he had gone all round, extending a limp, moist paw to each, did it occur to him to remove his hat.

“Autre pays, autre moeurs,” murmured Claverton in response to a charming little grimace of amusement which Lilian flashed at him from across the table, in reference to the new arrival.

A seat was found for the Dutchman, and a well-garnished plate, and being provided with a knife and fork he began to make voracious play with the same. Then having removed the edge of a very exuberant appetite, he raised his head from the platter and waxed talkative.

“Oom Walter is well?”

“Ja. Pretty so so.”

“And Mrs Brathwaite?”

“Also.”

“Det is goed,” and then having given a like satisfactory account of hisvrouwandkindersthe Boer informed them that he was on his way to Thirlestane, with the object of purchasing some oxen from Naylor.

“Claverton’s going over there this morning,” said Mr Brathwaite, unthinkingly. “You can go over with him.”

“So,” said the Dutchman with a nod of approval. “We will ride together.”

This didn’t meet Claverton’s wishes at all.

“I’m afraid not,” he said. “Sticks is rather lame, and I shall have to send for my other horse. They’ll hardly find him till the afternoon—if then. It won’t be worth Botha’s while to wait.”

“No. I don’t think it will,” said good-natured Mrs Brathwaite, who had taken in the situation at a glance. Lilian, not understanding the Boer dialect, was an unconscious auditor of what was going on.

Breakfast over, the Dutchman sat for about half an hour outside, smoking his pipe and talking over the usual subjects with his host—sheep, ostriches, the state of the country, how much longer they could do without rain, and so on. Then, saddling up his small, rough-looking nag, he shook hands all round and departed, thoroughly content with himself and all the world.

“What a queer fellow!” said Lilian, gazing after the awkward, receding figure of their late guest, who, with his feet jammed to the heels in the stirrups, was shuffling leisurely along, pipe in mouth.

“Yes, isn’t he?” answered Claverton. “But he’s a fair specimen of the typical Boer. Washes three times a year, sleeps in his clothes, and wears his hat in the house.”

“Lilian, dear; hadn’t you better get ready to start?” suggested Mrs Brathwaite.

“I was just thinking the same,” said Claverton; “but,” he added, in a lower tone, “I couldn’t find it in my conscience to hasten even such a temporary separation, and yet I was racked with apprehension lest some other wayfarer should turn up and make a third.”

She gave him a bright smile as she flitted indoors; then he, having got into his riding-gear, went round to the stable and simply made Jan the Hottentot groom’s life a burden to him over the caparisoning of Lilian’s steed. This bit was too sharp—that too soft—those reins were too hard for the hands—and what the devil did he mean by leaving those two specks of rust on the stirrup-iron? Jan and his deputy—an impish-looking little bushman—couldn’t make it out at all; Baas Clav’ton was usually so easy-going, and now here he was fidgeting worse than the “sir” in the long boots (Allen).

Then Lilian came out, looking lovely in her well-fitting blue habit. There was just a little air of timidity about her which was inexpressibly charming, as Claverton put her into the saddle. She was not a bold horsewoman, she confessed. She was ashamed to say that if anything she was just a wee bit afraid every time she mounted a horse. Nevertheless she sat beautifully, and the somewhat timid hand held the reins as gracefully if not quite as firmly as that of any hard-riding Amazon. To-day she was mounted on a handsome old bay horse of Mr Brathwaite’s, who carried his head well, had a firm, easy walk, and was as safe as a church, while Claverton rode a dark chestnut just flecked with white, a fine, spirited animal which he had bought to supplement the faithful “Sticks,” using the latter for the rougher kinds of work.

“Do you know, nothing but my unblushing mendacity kept that seedy Dutchman from inflicting himself upon our ride?” remarked Claverton, when they had started; and he told her of his little subterfuge.

“Shocking! You had no right to tell such a story,” she answered, with a laugh.

“Hadn’t I? Which would have been best—the lie or the Dutchman? ‘Of the two evils,’ you know, and I thought the lie the least. Perhaps you would have preferred the Dutchman?”

“No, I would not. But I think—well, I think—you did about the very best thing you could have done,” she replied, breaking into a silvery laugh. “But don’t take that as any encouragement to persevere in the art. It’s a dangerous one, and I believe you are quite an adept in it already. In fact, I’ve heard you tell one or two shocking fibs myself.”

“All’s fair in love and war.” Then noting the look which stole over her face he wished the quotation unsaid. “But I promise you I won’t indulge in mendacity any more than I can help.”

“You must not do it at all. Seriously, it isn’t right.”

“Except as a choice of evils. How would society get on without its mendacities?”

“Never mind about society,” retorted Lilian, brushing aside an inconvenient argument in right womanly fashion. “And now promise you’ll do what I’m going to ask you.”

“Oh, cheerfully.”

“I’m going to set you a penance.”

“Consider it performed. But what is it?”

“Well, the next time a choice of evils is offered you, you are to choose the one which does not involve romancing.”

“That must depend upon its nature.”

“Oh, you promised!”

“So I did, and so did Herod, and look what came of it.”

“Never mind about Herod,” was the laughing reply. “I have got you at a disadvantage, and I mean to keep you at it. Look, are not those Kafirs picturesque, in their red blankets, filing through the dark green of the bush?” she broke off, pointing out half-a-dozen ochre-painted beings who were crossing the valley some distance from them. They were walking in single file, and every now and then one would half stop and throw a remark over his shoulder in a deep bass tone. Their necklaces of jackals’ teeth showed white against their red bodies, which glistened in the sun, and as they marched along, head erect and with their kerries over their shoulders, they certainly did look picturesque.

“Yes, and do you notice how clear the air is? I can make out nearly every word those fellows are saying,” answered Claverton.

“Can you really? What are they talking about?”

“What are they talking about? Now look at them. The noble savage on his native heath, looking too, as if it actually did belong to him, striding with free and independent bearing, proud and scornful in mien. You think they are talking of war and tribal greatness, and the extermination of the hated white man, and such-like lofty and ambitious schemes? Nothing of the sort. One fellow is narrating how he got a thorn in his right heel, and how badly his brother extracted it for him, while three of the others are all trying to say at once what a fool the brother was, and that they could have done it much better.”

Lilian broke into a peal of laughter. “How absurd you are! You have quite taken the poetry out of them, and now they look like a very commonplace lot of beings. But is that really what they were saying?”

“It is, upon my word. To see a lot of Kafirs talking you would think they were letting off a stream of oratory, what with all their gesticulation and modulation of voice. In nine cases out of ten they are discussing the veriest trivialities.”

“I’m not sure that I’m glad I know that. It spoils the romance of the thing. I shan’t look at them with the same interest.”

“You are given to idealisation, I see,” he said. “It is a delightful pastime, and I must not do anything to shock it. But, look! That, at all events, is entirely free from the commonplace.”

They had reached the brow of an eminence, and before them lay unfolded a panorama which brought a flush of delight to Lilian’s face. Upland and valley lay sleeping in the golden sunshine, a rolling expanse of verdure, now open and grassy, now covered with thick bush, or dotted here and there with feathery mimosas. Wave upon wave of rise and swell, there seemed no end to the wide beautiful plains; and the eye wandered on, over and over it, drinking in a new delight in the far-seeing vision, then turning to refresh itself in the grand mountain chain which bounded its range in front. Stretching afar, in a hundred and fifty miles of stately crescent, rose those lofty mountains with their sunny slopes and beetling cliffs, and black forest-clad sides seen through the dim uncertainty of the summer haze; while, towering above the rest, the Great Winterberg raised his weather-beaten crest to the cloudless bine. The thatch and white walls of a farmhouse or two, visible here and there in the distance, redeemed the spectacle from the utter wildness of a newly-trodden land, but on the other hand added to the peaceful solemnity of the scene. Hard by, the air resounded with the low hum of bees busily gathering their stores from the blossoming sprays of a neighbouring clump of bush; spreuws whistled, and a dainty little sugar-bird—the humming-bird of Southern Africa—flitted across the path, his painted plumage glittering in the sun. Down in the valley two or three pairs of blue cranes roamed about picking in the grass, and every now and then their strange rasping note floated not unmelodiously through the calm.

Lilian, in her intense love of the beautiful, could not restrain a cry of delight as she gazed upon the splendid panorama before them. The exhilarating exercise and the warm balminess of the air had brought the loveliest flush into her clear olive cheeks, and as she sat there lightly reining in her horse, while the sweet eyes sparkled and dilated and a witching smile carved the usually sad mouth, her companion thought he had never seen such a picture in his life.

“A lovely background with a lovelier central figure,” he murmured. “Look at it well,” he added. “Take it all in thoroughly, now; it will never look the same again. Nothing ever strikes us as it does the first time.”

She looked half round at him. “Am I delaying you?”

“Delayingme? Good heavens!” is all the reply he can make just then. Often in the time to come will he remember this day, this moment. Often will he stand in imagination as he does now with one arm over the pommel of his saddle, watching the radiant face of this girl in its almost divine beauty, set in entranced contemplation of the glorious landscape all gleaming with purple and gold in the flooding sunshine. And remembering it he will feel as though he had lost Heaven. A dull, gnawing pain tugs at his heart as a forecast of the future runs darkly through him, but with a great effort he thrusts it aside; he will live in the present, and sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

“What are those, down there?” cried Lilian. “Bucks of some sort?”

“Yes. Springbok. There are a few on this side of the place.”

Some two dozen of the graceful creatures were trotting leisurely along on the slope below them. They were near enough for the dark stripe upon their shining sides to be plainly discernible, as also the rings on their black curved horns, as they kept turning their heads to gaze inquiringly at their human observers.

“How pretty they are!” said Lilian. “We are seeing ever so many queer things to-day, and this beautiful country. Do you know, I am thoroughly enjoying this ride.”

“Are you? I wish it might last for ever.”

His face wears the same look of longing desperation which it wore in the starlight, while they stood by the pool. Quickly the gladness fades from hers as a light that has gone out. She thinks how selfish she is to throw her joyousness at him thus, while his heart is aching for love of her.

“Hush!” she says, in a low compassionate tone. “Remember our compact.”

Claverton dare not trust himself to look at her. His eyes are fixed on the hazy slopes of the far-off mountains, whose green and purple sides he scarcely so much as sees. For some minutes neither speaks. Then with a quick restless sigh he throws himself into the saddle.

“You are right,” he says, huskily. “It is I who am weak; weak as water. Only this once. I will not transgress again.”

They resumed their way. The springboks, startled by the sudden move forward, bounded off. On the brow of the rise, several of them began leaping high into the air, with all four feet off the ground together, and their bodies in the form of a semicircle. Being in relief against the sky, the effect was not a little bizarre.

“What ridiculous creatures!” said Lilian, watching them. “I never saw such contortions.”

“Yes, they are vindicating their name,” said her companion, tranquilly. He had recovered his composure, and was thankful for this diversion.

Cresting the next ridge they came suddenly upon a couple of advancing horsemen, heavy-faced, lumbering-looking fellows, their complexions tanned to the colour of brickdust, and it needed but a glance at their general untidiness, and seedy get-up, to pronounce upon their nationality.

They stopped and shook hands with Claverton, doffing their greasy hats to his companion, at sight of whom even their wooden countenances showed signs of animation. A few commonplace questions and answers were exchanged, then one of the Boers, glancing at Lilian, asked with the freedom of speech customary among that delightfully primitive people: “Is that your wife?”

He answered without moving a muscle, and enlightened them. They were only ignorant brutes, he reasoned, half savages almost; yet just then, the question had come upon him with a kind of shock. He was thankful that Lilian had not understood the conversation.

“I really must learn Dutch,” she said. “It isn’t nearly such an inviting tongue as the full melodious flow of the Kafir language; but far more useful, I should think. Everybody seems to speak it.”

“Yes, it’s the regular go-between jargon here. Very few even of the frontier people speak Kafir, and not one Kafir in five hundred can talk English, hence the necessity of a go-between. Look! There’s our destination.”

They had reached the brow of one of those long rolling undulations which formed a leading feature in the landscape, and on the rise opposite stood a large single-storeyed house, with an iron roof and deep verandah. A block of out-buildings adjoined, and several spacious enclosures sloped down into the hollow; but save for a few tall blue gums overshadowing the house, the surroundings were destitute of trees.

“Ah, you’ve found your way over to us at last,” said Emily Naylor, who with Laura Brathwaite had come out on the stoep to meet Lilian. “So glad to see you. Was it very hot, riding? You must be tired.”

“Oh, no,” answered Lilian, “the air was delightful, and the view—I never saw anything so perfect;” and she turned to look again at the wide, sweeping landscape stretching away in front.

“Yes; it’s very pretty,” said her hostess. “It is not so pretty here as at Seringa Vale, because we have no trees, but the look-out is much wider. But come inside and sit down, or shall we sit out here? You must be tired after your ride.”

“I’m not though, really. And you must not make me out an invalid,” answered Lilian, with a smile. “I’m far from that.”

“Then come and see the young ostriches.”

Lilian readily assented, and the whole party moved thither accordingly.

“Well, Miss Laura, you’re looking all the better for your change of air; in fact, blooming,” remarked Claverton, who was walking beside her. “By the way, where’s the twin?”

“Ethel? Oh, she’s down at the ostrich enclosure, where we are going. Mr Allen is there, too, and Will Jeffreys.”

“AliasScowling Will. So he’s here, is he?”

“Yes. But I can’t return you the compliment you just paid me. You look as if you had been up all night for a week,” answered Laura, with a spice of demure malice.

“Oh, don’t make personal remarks; it’s rude,” murmured Claverton, languidly.

“Ha—ha,” struck in Naylor. “Claverton’s been getting on the spree, I expect, now that you two are not there to keep him in order. And now here we are,” he went on, as they arrived at an improvised yard some twenty feet square, wherein a number of little oval-shaped woolly things were running about. “They are strong little beggars, not a seedy one among the lot.”

They had not been long hatched, and as they scuttled about, stopping occasionally to peck at the chopped lucerne strewn on the ground, they were just the size and shape of the parent egg, plus legs and a neck. Naylor picked one of them up.

“You’d never think that this little chap in less than a year’s time would be able to kick a fellow into the middle of next week, would you?” he said, showing it to Lilian.

“No, indeed,” replied she, stroking the little creature’s glossy brown neck, and passing her fingers through the thick coating of hair-like feathers like the soft quills of the porcupine, which covered its back. “What dear little things they are. They ought always to keep small.”

“Oho!” laughed Naylor. “Bad look out for those who farm them, if they did. You wouldn’t get much for a plucking off this little beggar, for instance.”

“Of course I didn’t mean that,” she explained. “I meant that it was a pity such pretty little things should grow up big, and ugly, and vicious.”

“It’s a good thing sometimes that they are vicious,” said Naylor. “It keeps the niggers from going into the enclosures and stealing the eggs, and even plucking the birds. They are taking to that already.”

“Are they not too much afraid of them?”

“Not always. Look at those two black chaps in yonder camp. They are four-year-old birds, and the nigger isn’t born who’d go in and pluck them. Look, you can see them both now,” added Naylor, pointing out a couple of black moving balls, many hundred yards off, in the middle of their enclosures.

“It is all very interesting,” exclaimed Lilian, half to herself, gazing around. Far away on the sunlit plains a herd of cattle was lazily moving; down by the dam in the hollow, whose glassy waters shone like burnished silver in the midday heat, stood a few horses, recently turned out of the kraal, swishing the flies with their tails, or scratching each other’s backs with their teeth, while in the ostrich “camps,” whose long, low walls ran up the slope, the great bipeds stalked majestically about, pecking at the herbage on the ground, or, with head erect and neck distended, looked and listened suspiciously, equally ready for a feed of corn or for an intruder. All seemed to tell of peace, and sunshine, and prosperity.

“How you must enjoy your life in this beautiful country!” she went on.

Naylor was hugely gratified. Subsequently he took occasion to remark to his wife that Lilian Strange was the nicest and the most sensible girl he had ever seen. “Why doesn’t Claverton cut in for her?” added the blunt, jovial fellow, in his free-and-easy way. “Then they could get hold of one of these places round here. He’s a fool if he doesn’t.” To which his wife answered, with a provoking smile of superior knowledge, that she supposed most people knew their own business best.

Now, however, he looked pleased. “Well, yes; we’ve been brought up in it, you see, and shouldn’t be happy in any other. But I should have thought that you, coming out from England, would have found it rather slow. Perhaps you haven’t had time to, though, as yet.”

“You mean that the novelty hasn’t worn off yet? No more it has; but even when it did, that would make but little difference. There is a charm about this beautiful country, with its solitudes, its grand mountains, and rolling plains, and wild associations, which, so far from becoming tame, would grow upon one. And the climate, too, is perfect.”

Naylor laughed diffidently. “Yes; but there’s another side to that picture. How about bad seasons, and drought, and war, and locusts, and stock-lifting, and so on? It isn’t all fun here on the frontier.”

“Now, I won’t be disenchanted,” she retorted, with a bright smile. “You must not try and spoil the picture I have drawn.”

“Then I won’t. Hallo, Ethel! We’ve been looking for you,” he added, turning as he, for the first time, discovered she had joined them. “Here’s Miss Strange prepared to swear by the frontier—in fact, she has done so already.”

“Yes?” said Ethel, coming forward to greet Lilian; and Claverton could not help contrasting the two as they stood together: the one with her soft, dark, winning beauty, the lovely eyes never losing for a moment their serene composure; the other, bright, laughing, and golden, the full red lips ever ready to curl in mischief-loving jest or mocking retort, and hair like a rippling sunbeam. Yet nine men out of ten would probably have awarded the palm to Ethel. “Yes?” she said, and, in her heart of hearts, added, “and with her own reasons.” She did not feel very cordially towards Lilian just then.

“She says it’s perfect, all round,” went on Naylor—“a young Paradise.”

“I don’t know,” said Ethel. “I shouldn’t like to stay on the frontier all the year round. One would miss the balls and theatre in Cape Town.”

“Aha!” laughed Emily, “Ethel is still intent on slaughter. She made such havoc last session; ever so many poor fellows threw themselves off the cliffs on Table Mountain on her account; how many was it, Ethel—twenty-five?—that she had to be spirited away in the night for fear of the vengeance of their bereaved mammas.”

“Call it fifty while you’re about it,” she answered. “How awfully hot it has become!”

This served as a pretext for a move indoors, which was made accordingly.

“So you’re all determined to go back this evening,” said Naylor, as they sat in the verandah after dinner.

“I think we must,” answered Ethel; “aunt will think we are never coming back.”

Hicks, who at the other end of the verandah was “assisting” Laura to play with the children—these having finished their morning’s lessons, had invaded the party—pricked up his ears and looked rueful in advance. If they were persuaded to stay, he would have to go anyhow; but Ethel was firm, and he breathed freely again.

“But, Claverton, you and Miss Strange might stop—to-night, at any rate,” persisted Naylor.

It was Ethel’s turn to feel apprehensive. She had schooled herself into accepting the situation, and accepting it patiently. The strife had been a hard one, and she had suffered in it—suffered acutely, but she had conquered. Yet the struggle had not been won in a moment, and it had left its traces; but she seemed not to show them; she was a trifle graver, and more subdued in manner, that was all. A few days ago she had longed, with an intense longing, to get away—away from the sound of his voice, from the glance of his eyes; yet now that it is a question as to whether they shall return without him, her heart beats quick, and she seems to hang upon the verdict which they are all discussing so calmly.

“I don’t think we can to-day, Naylor,” answered Claverton, a glance at Lilian having satisfied him that she did not favour the scheme.

“But look here,” Naylor was beginning, when his wife cut him short.

“Why shouldn’t we inspan and go back with them, Ned? We can leave Seringa Vale again before breakfast if you like, and there’s something I want to see mother about.”

“All right, we’ll do that. Don’t you think Seringa Vale is rather a good name for a place, Miss Strange?”

“Yes—so pretty,” answered Lilian; “it’s a poem in itself.”

“How do you like Thirlestane?”

“I like it, too. Did you name it?”

“Yes,” replied Naylor, “it’s called after a small place my grandfather had in England. Its original name is a Dutch one—Uitkyk, a look-out; but Thirlestane’s better thanUitkyk, isn’t it?”

“Jack Armitage calls it ‘Oatcake’ even to this day,” put in Claverton.

Suddenly, a loud booming noise came from one of the enclosures. All looked in that direction. The great ostrich was plainly visible, his neck inflated to six times its size as he emitted his deep call, volleying it out in heavy booms, three at a time.

“Fancy an ostrich making such a row as that! You wouldn’t have thought it possible, would you, Miss Strange?” said Gough, the tutor. He had joined the party at dinner-time, when school was over.

“I don’t think I should,” answered Lilian. “The first time I heard it, I was so frightened. It was at Seringa Vale. I was lying awake at night, and this great booming sounded so awful in the dead of night. I hadn’t a notion what it was; the first thing I thought of was some wild beast.”

“A lion, I suppose,” said Naylor.

“I think the whole of the Zoological Gardens ran through my vivid imagination. How Mr Brathwaite laughed when I told him about it next morning! Yet I was terribly frightened.”

“No wonder,” said Claverton. “It’s a precious uncanny sort of row to strike up in the middle of the night, especially when you don’t know where it comes from, or what it’s all about.”

It was now voted time to be getting the horses in. This served as a signal for a general break-up, the masculine element of the party making towards the stable, or the enclosure, where some manoeuvring was needed, as we have seen, to obtain possession of the requisite steeds without exciting the wrath of the autocratic biped who reigned there.

Claverton having, as before, submitted Lilian’s steed and its gear to a rigid examination, now whisking a speck of dust off the saddle, or letting down a link of the curb-chain and readjusting it, assisted her to mount.

“Wish that fool would go on,” he muttered savagely, referring to Allen, whose ancient screw was mooning along with a kind of crop-the-grass gait. The rest of the party were on ahead. “He needn’t wait for us,” and flinging himself on his spirited chestnut he bade the groom let go the reins. The fine animal tossed his head and sidled and champed his bit as he felt himself free; free yet not free, for his rider was a consummate horseman and had him perfectly in hand.

Lilian laughed. “Poor fellow,” she said. “Do you know, I sometimes feel so sorry for him. You all chaff him dreadfully and—Oh!”

The last exclamation is one of alarm, for at that moment a troop of ostriches—young ten-month-old birds—having deserted its herd in one of those stampedes to which these idiotic bipeds are so liable, whirls past them, with wings outstretched and snowy plumes sparkling in the sun, and Lilian’s steed, which has not yet become quite accustomed to the gigantic fowls, shows signs of restiveness.

“Don’t be frightened—darling. You’re quite safe,” says her escort, noting the scared look in her face, as the old horse tugs at his bridle and snorts and plunges a little. “He’ll be perfectly quiet in half a minute.”

He is so close beside her all the time, and speaks in such a reassuring tone that her alarm subsides, and the old steed drops into his normal steadiness as though half ashamed of himself.

“Are you not utterly disgusted with such a coward?” says she, with a faint apologetic laugh. “I ought to have enjoyed the affair as a good opportunity for showing off, oughtn’t I?”

“One must show on before showing off. I wouldn’t have you anything but timid on board a horse for the world, except for your own sake. It suits you to perfection.”

He is in earnest. These oft-recurring little alarms of hers are so captivating in their pure unaffectedness, so womanly; and, withal, the sense of protection imparted to himself is delicious. And if she is at times somewhat shrinking, as at present, even that lends an additional attraction to her delicate refinement.

“Every one is not an Amazon, thank heaven,” he continued, “and you will soon be as much at home on horseback as in a chair. We will have a lot of practice. Besides, you know, lately you have not been very well, and that is calculated to unnerve you. We will do our best to set you up thoroughly—while—you are here.” He tried to speak firmly, but it was of no use, that tell-tale tremor shook his voice over the last four words, for they conjured up a picture of when she should be no longer “here,” and he dared not think of it. At present he would thrust the thought far from him.

They had now overtaken Allen, and were obliged to shape the conversation accordingly. “Shall we canter on a little?” suggested Claverton. “The rest are a good way ahead.”

Lilian acquiesced, and their steeds bounded along the grassy slopes at an easy elastic canter, but Allen’s sorry screw finding a difficulty in keeping pace with the long stride of the well-bred horses, that disconsolate youth soon dropped behind.

“Here is our panorama again,” said Claverton, reining in on the top of the hill, whence they had enjoyed the view that morning.

“It looks different already. This golden light sheds a rare peacefulness—an evening repose—upon it, which is perfectly enchanting. It is hard to determine, but of the two I think I preferred it this morning. There was an exhilaration in the very air that made one feel the pleasure of merely living.”

“I liked it best this morning, too,” he answered gravely. Then all the day was before him—so many hours withher. Now they had come—never to return.

Volume One—Chapter Twenty One.Hicks Waxes Intrepid.“Phew-w!” whistled Hicks, staring in consternation at the scene before him. Then he added in a determined voice: “But I’m going straight over that bridge or down the river, one of the two.”“Umph! More fool you,” growled his companion. “I’m damned if I am.”“But look here, Thorman. If we don’t get across now while we’ve a chance, Heaven only knows when we shall. The river’s ‘down’ as it has never been before, and all along the road we have heard nothing but how it’s coming down harder. Every blessed one of the bridges will go, and we shall be stuck on this side, it may be for weeks.”Thorman made no reply, but sat on his horse scowling ferociously at the flood in front of them.The spot was a drift on the Great Fish River crossed by an important main road which was one of the principal lines of transport up-country. Some years previously a fine bridge had been thrown across the bed of the river, which at that point was about fifty feet deep and twice the distance in width, thus rendering traffic independent of the rise or fall of the water or the state of the drift—at no time a first-rate one. But although the actual bed of the river was wide and deep, the stream itself was an insignificant trickle, dabbling along over stones, with here and there along sandy reach, after the manner of a North Country trout stream, but without its dash and sparkle. Except in rainy seasons; and then its red turbid waters, swelled by the contributions of numerous confluents and the drainings of the high watershed on either side, tore foaming between their high banks, carrying down drift-wood and trunks of trees in their swift pent-up course. But the bridge, a fine iron one, standing sixty feet from the bottom of the river to its parapet, rendered the transport-riders (carriers) absolutely independent of these floods, as has been said. Whether the stream was almost dry in its bed, or rolling down rocks and tree-stumps, mattered nothing to them now. Instead of the tedious delay of several days on the bank, and then the trouble and risk of crossing a bad, washed-out drift, their waggons rolled as gaily across the bridge as along the road, and they kept on their way as if there was no river there at all. Once or twice since the bridge had been built, the water had risen within a few feet of its roadway; but though an occasional prediction would be made that the river was capable of rising a great deal higher still, yet it had not done so. The bridge was of enormous strength, said they who were most concerned, and would stand against anything.But now it seemed as if the predictions of disaster were going to be verified. For several days and nights it had rained incessantly; not a series of heavy deluging showers, but a steady, telling downpour. No break had occurred, not even a pause of ten minutes—rain, rain, rain, till people became as accustomed to the continuous fall upon their roofs of zinc or thatch as to the ticking of a clock—and the parched earth, now thoroughly soft and moistened, ran off the superfluous water in streams from every runnel and gully, which emptying themselves into the larger rivers, these in their turn came down in such force as to flood their banks, doing much and serious damage.And the prospect before the two who sat there on their horses swathed from head to foot in long mackintoshes was, it must be allowed, sufficient justification for Thorman’s retort. An expanse of tossing, swirling water lay in front, and in the middle of this stood the bridge, or rather all that could be seen of it, for its roadway lay at least a foot beneath the surface. The banks of the river were overflowed to some distance, and here it was comparatively smooth; but in the middle the mighty stream rushed on its way with a dulling and ever deafening roar, rolling its huge red waves; curling, hissing, splashing; now heaving up a great tree-stump which, tossing for a moment, and leaping half out like a live thing, disappeared again in the boiling depths; now floating down the carcase of an ox or half-a-dozen drowned sheep. Against the bridge lay jammed an accumulation of drift-wood and logs, which groaned and grated with half-human shriek as the fierce current hurled itself continually upon the obstructing mass, which as yet it was unable to break through.For sky, a pall of dark rain-cloud—heavy, opaque, and without a break anywhere—resting, in a regular line, low down upon the sides of the high hills on either side of the valley. Not a breath of wind to toss about the showers—nor, indeed, could the term shower apply. A downpour—straight, penetrating, and incessant. On the opposite bank of the river many waggons lay outspanned, their number augmenting as more kept on arriving in twos and fours from up-country, and the cracking of long whips, and the peculiar “carrying” yells of their drivers, were borne through the roar of the flood in front. Though early in the afternoon it was dark and gloomy, and the great rolling river, its red, turbid, hissing surface covered with evidences of damage and destruction, the lowering sky, the oppressive and woe-begone aspect of the surroundings, made up a picture of indescribable weirdness and threatening grandeur. The elements were supreme; man was nowhere.“Oh, hang it, Thorman,” went on Hicks, impatiently. “You’re not afraid of a little water? I must get home to-night, and it’s now or never.”The two had left some days earlier to attend a sale a good distance from home; for Hicks, as we have said, was an energetic fellow, and always alive to the main chance. The rain had just begun at the time they started; but they hadn’t bargained for this.“Well, one damned fool makes two damned fools. Come along then,” growled Thorman. It would never do for it to be said he was afraid—and by a “Britisher,” too.“That’s the sort, oldBaas. I knew you were humbugging,” rejoined Hicks, heartily. He would have gone through more than the present undertaking, though that was no child’s play, when he thought of the alternative—several days’ weary waiting at the wretched little inn just left behind. Why, one evening of it would be too awful. But things gain or suffer by comparison, and now the comparison lay between this contingency and Seringa Vale, a cheerful room, a snug home circle, and—Laura. So quite airily he prepared to risk his life, having persuaded his companion to follow his wise example.A group of men stood at the water’s edge exchanging speculations on the probable turn of affairs, for a few waggons, bound up-country, lay outspanned on this side, though the large majority, coming down country, were on the opposite bank. They eyed the two travellers inquiringly.“I say, Mister,” said a tall fellow, with a beard the size of a peacock’s tail, falling over his chest. “You’re never going to try and get through, are you?”“We are going to do just that,” growled Thorman.“We are not going to try, but we are going to get through,” asserted Hicks confidently.“Well, I hope you may,” said the other, “but take my advice and don’t attempt it.”“I’m going to attempt it, at any rate,” answered Hicks. “Thanks all the same.”“Much better not,” said another sturdy purveyor. “Joe’s right. There’s nearly a yard of water on the bridge, and the thing’s been cracking and groaning under all that drift-wood. It’ll go any minute, I tell you. I wouldn’t go across for fifty pound. Besides, you’ve got to get to it first, and there’s a lot of water on either side. Better give it up.”“Oh, I know the road all right, every inch of it,” was the reply. “Come along, Thorman.”Fortunately for them they did know the road, for on either side of it lay deep fissures and gullies, now, of course, all under water. To flounder into one of these would be just better than getting into the river itself. Still it would be extremely dangerous.“Well, good-bye,” called out the men on the bank as the two went plashing into the surging water. “So long! We shall meet in the next world.”A jest which contained more than half the truth for all the likelihood of their ever meeting again in this, and so its utterers knew, perhaps better than the two on whose ears it fell; yet the rough, venturesome life led by these men rendered them reckless and indifferent in the face of danger. They could jest with Death, with his grim hand put out before them.“Well, now we’re in for it you’d better let me go first,” said Thorman. “I know these rivers better than you do.”Hicks acquiesced, and they plunged on. As they neared the bridge the current increased in strength, but not yet did they feel anything like its full force.“Quick! Turn to your right,” shouted Thorman, wheeling his horse. His experienced eye detected one of those deep fissures above mentioned, into which his steed even then nearly slipped. A plunge and a splash, and he was on firm ground again, Hicks following.And now, as they neared the bridge, the horses began to show signs of terror: snorting and tossing their heads, their eyes rolling wildly as they began to feel the effect of the swift, powerful current flowing round the great piers at the entrance to the bridge, and had the riders lost nerve their doom was sealed. And in truth the situation was somewhat awful, and well calculated to try the strongest nerves. Before them lay the submerged bridge, the water tearing over its roadway so as to hide it completely—to what depth they could hardly guess. Even Hicks began to repent of his headstrong rashness as he looked giddily at the red, heaving flood rearing up its great waves as it thundered against the bridge; but it was too late now, there was no turning back.“So-ho, boy!—careful!—so-ho!” he cried, patting the neck of his frightened steed, which, terrified at the roar and rush of water through the ironwork, showed signs of backing; but the current upon the bridge shallowing after rather a deep plunge just before reaching it, in a measure reassured the animals.“Don’t look at the river, Hicks; keep your eyes on your horse, and look only at where you’re going,” said Thorman, in a set, deep voice, speaking over his shoulder; but the warning was nearly lost in the deafening roar of the flood. Overhead, on either side, rose the parapet of the bridge, and, as they splashed along the submerged roadway, every now and then an uprooted tree or a huge stump would be hurled with an appalling crash upon the accumulation of drift-wood which lay against the quivering mass of ironwork. In one place the head of a drowned ox protruded through an aperture as though the animal were looking into a road; having been dashed there by the current, and its body being unable to follow. A bizarre and ghastly sight was this great head, with its fixed, glassy eyes, and yet living aspect, glaring from out of the ruin. But such things as these our adventurers saw as in a dream. All their attention was turned to their horses and their own safety. They could feel the huge structure quiver and shake as they passed along it, and ever in their ears was the stunning, deafening roar of the mighty flood as it boomed beneath and around them.And now the worst was over. They had gained the other end of the bridge, but before them lay an expanse of submerged land, where the current, if not so strong and deep as on the side they had started from, was at any rate wide enough still to constitute a source of peril in the exhausted state of their steeds. But the bottom was a smooth gentle slope, free from any of the occasional cracks and fissures which had troubled them at first.“Don’t stop, Hicks! Keep his headupthe stream. We’ll be through in a minute!” cried Thorman; and cramming his hat down, he settled himself firmer in the saddle, and struck into the open flood again.But the horses knew that the worst was over, and kept up bravely, snorting and puffing like traction-engines as they struggled to maintain their footing in the swirling tide. As in a dream, the riders could see a crowd of men at the water’s edge; could hear their cheers of encouragement; then the resistance of the current slackened and ceased, and the exhausted animals walked despondently out, and stood, their dripping flanks panting and heaving, as Hicks and Thorman slid to the ground, little less done up than their steeds.“I say—did you do that for a bet?” asked one of the crowd which had been standing ready to afford them what assistance they could, as well as to watch an event of some excitement, a perfect godsend to these men delayed there for many tedious days.“No. Bet be damned,” growled Thorman. “I did it because that fool persuaded me to; and I wouldn’t do it again for a thousand pounds.”“Oh, hang it, old man, don’t be shirty,” cried Hicks. “We are through now, you know, and the proof of the pudding’s in the eating. Besides, we’ve shown what our horses can do.”“By the way, Mister, d’you care to part with that same animal?” said a tall, lank transport-rider, critically eyeing Hicks’ steed. “Because I want a horse that ain’t afraid o’ water. I have a lot of drift work to do at times, and that critter o’ yours ’ud just suit me. What’s the figure?”“Well, no, I don’t,” answered Hicks. “It would be rather rough to get rid of him, just as he’s brought me through that, wouldn’t it?”“Oh, all right,” rejoined the other, good-humouredly, “I’d kind of taken a fancy to him, that’s all. When you do, just drop a line to John Kemp, Salem, Lower Albany.”The two turned and waved their hats in response to a cheer which arose from the other side.“Well, we shan’t meet in the next world yet, my friends,” remarked Hicks, with a laugh, referring to the last God-speed hurled after them as they began their perilous crossing. Then, leading their horses, they turned towards the roadside inn, which lay a couple of hundred yards from the river bank, and whose landlord, by reason of the presence of a number of men in a state of enforced idleness, was driving a roaring trade. The inn, or “hotel” as it was usually called, was, this afternoon, in a state of exceeding liveliness, for it was full of transport-riders, making merry—one or two of them, indeed, decidedly “cut,” and in that condition affording huge entertainment to the rest. Ordinarily a sober class of men, they were now indulging through sheerennui, being driven, as one of them expressed it, “to get on the spree in self-defence,” and to keep their spirits up. So the place rang with the boisterous mirth of many jovial souls, and the air was heavy with the fumes of grog and Boer tobacco which not all the open windows and the door sufficed to carry off. Hicks started, as a dog and an empty whisky-bottle shot past his legs at the same time in the doorway.“Beg pardon, mate,” cried a giant in corduroy, from across the room, not moving from his place on a dingy sofa, where he sat wedged in among other boon companions. “Sims here bet me I couldn’t hit that Kafir cur on the side of the ear, the loser to stand drinks all round.”“And, by jingo, you’ve lost,” rejoined Hicks, good-humouredly, “so we claim to cut in to the penalty.”“Right you are,” cried the other, with a jolly laugh. “What’s it to be—‘French’—Whisky? All right. Here, Sims, whisky and soda for these gentlemen here; Hennessy for me,” and then followed much discussion and questioning among the rest as to what they would take, one rather surly fellow coming near to having his head punched for curtly declining to benefit by the general “treat.”The hotel-keeper, a thin, wiry-looking man, with grey whiskers and a sharp face, now came forward.“Where might you be from?” he began. “Want to off-saddle? You see I’m pretty busy just now,” he went on, as if apologising for the delay.“Wemightbe from the bottom of the river, thanks to this fellow, and we don’twantto off-saddle, because we have,” growled Thorman. He was determined, characteristically, to make the worst of the situation, and resented having been made a fool of, as he phrased it, by Hicks.“Why, it can’t be that you’ve come across the river?” cried the landlord in amazement.“The devil it can’t! We have, though, unless we’ve gone down it and got into hell,” fiercely replied the other, with a contemptuous glance around; but the sulky rejoinder was received with a loud laugh by the boisterous but good-natured crew as a capital joke.“Come through the river?” exclaimed a rough-looking fellow sitting close by. “Here, Mister, you and your friend must have a drink with me. What’s it to be?”“No fear,” called out the thrower of the bottle. “The gentlemen are going to have one with me, Robins; they can have one with you after. Here, Sims, look alive, trundle up those drinks.”“Keep your temper, Hallett,” replied the imperturbable landlord. “A man can’t wait on a dozen fellows at once, you see; and there are a precious deal more than a dozen of you here.”“And devilish glad you are of that same, you old humbug,” retorted the other, cheerily.“Tell you what it is,” an oracle of “the road” was saying in a loud voice, for the benefit of the assemblage. “That bridge’ll go, I say, before night; but, anyhow, it’s bound to go before morning.”“Don’t know about that, Bill,” said another. “It’s a good strong bit of iron, and my opinion is that it’ll hold out.”“It won’t, though. It’ll never stand the crush of drift-wood that’s against it now. And, mind you, the river’s coming down harder nor ever it was—I know. It’s raining like blazes up the country, far more’n it is here, and what with the Tarka and the Little Fish and half-a-dozen other streams besides, emptying into this, the bridge is bound to go. Mark my words.”“Well, p’raps you’re right, Bill. We haven’t had such a flood as this in my time, and I’ve known this road, man and boy, for over fifty years. Still I should have thought the bridge’d stand. It’s a good bit of iron. But what do you say, Mister?” he added, appealing to Thorman. “You’ve just come over it, I hear.”“What do I say? Why, that the damned thing won’t hold out till night,” was the gruff reply. “It jumped about like a twenty-foot swing while we were on it. And the fool that made it ought to be strapped upon it now, say I.”“I’ve known one flood bigger than this, but that was before your time,” observed a wiry-looking little man, with white hair and a weasel-like face, self-complacent in the consciousness of having the pull over the two last speakers, and, indeed, over most of those present. “That was the time poor Owens was drowned. The river rose to within a foot of where we are sitting now before it went down again.”“Who was Owens, and how was he drowned?” inquired Hicks, spotting an episode.“Who was Owens?” repeated the old man, placidly filling his pipe. “A fool; because he thought he was smarter than any of us, and thought he could cross the river when we couldn’t. He went in on horseback. The river was running just as it was to-day, only not quite so deep. He went down, as a matter of course, before he was half-way through.”“Couldn’t any of you help him?” asked Hicks.The old fellow glanced up with a look of silent contempt for any one capable of putting such a question. Then he calmly struck a match and lighted his pipe, and having done so he continued:“The river was full of drift-wood, and we saw one big tree bearing down upon Owens full swing. We hollered out to warn him, but the water was kicking up such a row that he couldn’t hear, nor would it have helped him much if he had. Well, the tree came bang against him, entangling him and the horse in the branches. They rolled over and over; and tree, and horse, and Owens disappeared. We never saw him again, but the next I heard of him was that his body had been found a week afterwards, when the water had run off, sticking in the bed of the river, among the drift-wood down Peddie way.”“Poor devil,” exclaimed several of his auditors.“No one but a fool would have gone into the river at all,” concluded the old man, sententiously, as he tossed off the remainder of his grog.“I say, Thorman, we must be going,” said Hicks.“All right,” replied that worthy, knocking the ashes out of his pipe and rising to his feet.“Oh, but you needn’t be off yet,” objected he addressed as Hallett. “Stay here with us and make a night of it; you can go on in the morning.”But Hicks was firm. It was not for this he had risked his life.“Awfully sorry, old man, but I must get back to-night.”“Hang it! Well, then, have another drink—just an ‘off-setter,’” persisted the other. “No? Well, then, good-bye. If you’re round my way any time, mind you give us a look up. We’ll get up a buck hunt, and some fun of some sort. Ta, ta! Take care of yourself. But you’re well able to do that now, I should think.”They settled for their horses’ forage, and going round to the stable, saddled-up, and were soon on their way; the steeds, after a good feed and a rub down, looking none the worse for their gallant efforts in crossing the perilous flood. And a carious sight was that which the neighbourhood of the drift presented as they rode forth. In every direction waggons were outspanned, standing in rows of six or seven, or in twos and threes, according to the number owned by or in charge of any one man, but everywhere waggons. A few were empty, but most of them were loaded high up with wool-bales, sent from up-country stores to the seaboard—or with hides, and horns, or other produce—for it was before the days of railroads, and the carrying trade was abundant and thriving. Their owners stood about in knots, watching the gathering flood; others passed to and from the inn. Some again sat stolidly by their fires smoking their pipes as they waited for the pot to boil, while a cloud of native servants—drivers and leaders—hung about the canteen or lolled by the fires, the deep bass of the manly Kafir mingling with the shrill chatter of Hottentots and Bastards (Note 1). A kind of twilight had come on prematurely, by reason of the lowering sky, and the red watch-fires glowed forth, and the crowd of waggons, considerably over a hundred, standing about, gave the place the appearance of a mining-camp, or a commissariat train halted while on the march. And every now and then, more waggons would come lumbering over the rise, the cracking of whips and the harsh yells of their drivers echoing through the heavy air.“Hi! Here! Where the hell are you coming to? Can’t you keep the right side of the road, instead of the side of the bullocks, damn you?”The voice proceeded from an unkempt and perspiring individual, in flannel shirt and corduroy trousers, who, wielding his long whip, walked beside a full span of sixteen oxen, the motive power of a mighty load of wool-bales. So insolent and aggressive was it in its tone, that even good-natured Hicks, to whom the query was addressed, and than whom a less quarrelsome fellow never lived, was moved to anger, and answered the incensed transport-rider pretty much in the same strain.“Oh, so you think I ought to get out ofyourway, do you?” roared the other.“I think you might be civil, confound it all!” fumed Hicks.“Suppose I ought to say ‘sir,’ eh?” went on the other, in wrathful, sneering tones.“Oh, go to the devil,” cried Hicks, fairly boiling over; “I’ve no time to stay jawing here all night with you,” he added, contemptuously, making as if he would ride on.“Haven’t you? Just get down; I’ll soon show you who’s the best hand at jawing, and at hitting, too. Come down here and try, if you’re not a blanked coward!” yelled the fellow. He thought that the other was afraid of him; but he reckoned without his host.“Oh, that’s your game, is it?” cried Hicks, springing to the ground, and throwing off his mackintosh. “Come on, I’m your Moses.” And he advanced towards the irate transport-rider, looking him fall in the eyes.The fellow, who now saw that he had a tough customer to deal with, began to repent of his hastiness, and would fain have backed out of the scrape into which his insolent, overbearing temper had led him, but it was too late to decline the contest, for several of his contemporaries, attracted by the prospect of a row, had gathered round. So he rushed at his opponent, hitting out blindly, right and left. But Hicks, who knew something of “the art of self-defence,” and was of sturdy, powerful build besides, found no difficulty in parrying this unscientific attack. Then with a well-planted “one—two,” straight from the shoulder, he landed his adversary in a heap on the slippery, trodden-down grass by the roadside.“He’s down—give him law,” cried one of the bystanders. “Who is it? What’s it all about?”“Dick Martin,” answered another voice. “He cheeked t’other fellow, or t’other fellow cheeked him, it don’t matter which; so they’re having it out. Get up, Dick, and go in at him again.”But Dick manifested no such inclination. He raised himself half up and sat glowering stupidly around, as if dazed. His nose was bleeding, and a huge lump over his eye betokened pretty plainly that he would wake on the morrow with that useful organ somewhat obscured.“Never mind. Get up and have another try, man,” called out the last speaker.“He can’t; he’s had enough. T’other’s been one too many for him,” said some one else. And he had.Hicks, who was far too good-hearted a fellow to exult over a fallen foe, however great the provocation received, said nothing. He lingered a moment to see if his adversary would show any sign of renewing battle, and then began to mount his horse. Just then a loud shout went up from the water’s edge about four hundred yards below them. All turned.“The bridge! It’s going!” cried some one.The spot where they stood, being on an eminence, overlooked the river, and they could see the strong ironwork of the parapet bend to the ponderous mass of accumulated drift-wood heaped against it. It yielded—then snapped; and with a thunder-crash sounding loud above the continuous roar of the flood, the vast obstruction ofdébrisbore it down. A huge wave reared its head many feet in the air, and fell with a mighty hiss, covering the rushing surface with seething foam. Then, the obstruction removed, the mighty river hurled itself forward, its horrible, many-tongued voices bellowing as if in savage joy at having overthrown and defeated the works of human ingenuity. All that could now be seen of the once fine bridge was a few strands of twisted ironwork clinging about what remained of the piers at each of its ends.“Let’s give the old bridge three cheers,” cried one of the spectators. “She’s been a good friend to us, and now we shall be put about as we were before for the want of her.”They did so; and a great shout went up from the outspan, echoing far along the sides of the darkening hills, where the lowering rain-clouds rested in an unbroken pall. The bridge had been a good friend to them, and now it was gone they would sorely feel the want of it for some time to come, until another should replace it, which might not be for years. So they cheered right heartily; but with a feeling of genuine regret.Meanwhile, at Seringa Vale, everything was at a standstill. The stock was kept at home, and in the soaked kraals the sheep stood huddled together, stolidly chewing the cad, and looking very forlorn in the dripping rain. But their owner’s watchful eye was everywhere, as, wrapped in a waterproof coat, he moved about, noting where it became necessary to cut a channel for the drainage of a fast accumulating body of water which threatened damage, and all hands would be turned out with spade and pick for this and such like duty. Even he was more than satisfied with the rainfall this time, and now and then cast an anxious look at the weather quarter.“I don’t think I ever saw the kloof so full as this before, and it’s still rising,” he said.“No?” answered Claverton, who was meditatively jerking a pebble or two across the broad, surging rush of water in front of them. “All the rivers in the country must be tolerably well down. Why, the bridges will never stand.”“No, they won’t. If it goes on like this till morning there won’t be a bridge left in the country, that’s my opinion. There’ll be a heap of damage done besides. Well, we can’t do anything more now, and it’s getting dark,” and they turned towards the house.Very cosy and cheerful looked the interior of that domicile, as a few minutes later, Claverton found his way thither, and got into dry clothes. No one was about—wait—yes—there was some one in the inner room. It was Lilian. She had been reading, and was seated by the window with her book open in her hand, just as the twilight and then the darkness had surprised her.“Trying to read in the dark? Worst thing possible for the eyes,” he said. “What have you been doing with yourself all day?”She turned to him.“Very much what you see me doing now—reading and—dreaming.”“The best possible occupation for a day like this. I’ve been doing the latter—dreaming,” he said.“You? Why, you have been hard at work all day,” said she. “I’ve been watching you walking about in the rain with a spade, and pitying you for being so uncomfortable, while we were all sitting indoors, dry and warm.”“Pitying me?”“To any extent,” she answered, looking up at him with a bright smile.He bent over her. “Yes, I was dreaming—of such a moment as this.”She did not answer. Her eyes were fixed on the gloom without and the soft falling rain. Oh, the continuous drip, drip of that ceaseless rain throughout this livelong day, turning the daylight into dusk, and beating time in her heart to the echoes of the past! And throughout it all was a vague, indefinable longing for this man’s presence. The enforced imprisonment in the house had been doubly irksome without him, and at last she had been constrained to own it to herself. Once she had seen him coming towards the door, and all unconsciously had made ready such a bright smile of welcome; but he had turned back, and the smile had faded, and a chill, sickly feeling around her heart had taken its place. What right had she to feel thus, she thought? In a few weeks they would part as friends, acquaintances, nothing more, and then—well, at any rate he knew the worst. But now as he found her in the darkening twilight, her heart gave a bound, and her voice assumed a dangerous tenderness as she replied to him.“The rain has been very cruel,” he went on. “I couldn’t catch so much as one stray glimpse throughout the whole afternoon. If you are blockaded indoors, you might look out of the window now and then.”“Why, I’ve done nothing else. And you, did you get very wet?” And there is a little inflection as of anxiety in her voice as she raises her eyes to his.“Don’t let’s talk about me, but about a far more interesting subject—yourself. Haven’t you been frightfully bored to-day?”“Well, I have rather—at least, I mean, I oughtn’t to say that, but one gets rather low sometimes, you know, even without much cause, and I’ve been so to-day,” she answered, her tone relapsing into one of dejection, and he, standing there beside her, began to feel deliriously happy, though well knowing that it was for the moment. But the gloaming was about them, and they were alone together. What more could he—could they—want?A light flashed from the other room; then a sound of voices. It was not exactly a blessing that Claverton gulped down, as some one was heard calling:“Lilian. Are you there? It’s supper-time. Why, what has become of her?” added the voice, parenthetically.Lilian started as if from a reverie. “Here I am,” and she rose hastily. Claverton was not the only one who watched her as she came out into the light, but the serene, beautiful face was as calm and unmoved as if she had been in their midst all the time.Very cheerful and homelike looked the lighted room, and the table with its hissing tea-urn, and knives and forks and dish-covers sparkling on the snowy cloth. Very bright and exhilarating in contrast to the wet, chill gloom without, and to those two, who had been at work in the rain all day, especially so.“The flood will do no end of damage,” Mr Brathwaite was saying, as he began to make play with the carving-knife. “There’ll be lots of stock swept away, I fear, and the homesteads along the river banks stand a good chance of following.”“That’s cheerful, for their owners,” remarked Claverton. “I should think old Garthorpe’s place would be one of the first to go.”“Serve him right, I was nearly saying. He doesn’t deserve to own a good farm like that—always preaching to the Kafirs instead of looking after it.”“Is he a missionary?” asked Lilian.“No. He ought to be, though. He’s quite humbug enough.”“Tsh!” laughed Mrs Brathwaite. “Lilian will think you a regular heathen.”“Can’t help it,” retorted the old man. “I know what I’m talking about, which is more than everybody does who professes to give an opinion on the subject. Any grocer’s boy, who in England would never get further than a shop-counter, makes a fine good trade of it by coming out here to ‘preach the Gospel’ to the heathen. It’s less trouble and pays infinitely better. What is the consequence? Kafirland is chock-full of bumptious, uneducated, hypocritical scamps, who live on the fat of the land, and are never happy unless meddling with what doesn’t concern them. All the disturbances which crop up from time to time, are hatched and fomented by these rascals. Call themselves teachers, indeed! What do they teach their lambs? To keep their hands off their neighbours’ property? Not a bit of it. And what missionary ever stuck to his post when war did break out, I should like to know? Not one. They clear out in time to save their own skins, never fear, and sneak off to befool the British public, while we are defending our lives and property. A set of meddlesome, mischief-brewing, slander-mongering frauds. They are the curse of the colony.”On this congenial theme the old man continued to descant for some time. Then the tread of horses was heard outside, and the arrival of Hicks and Thorman created a diversion.“So the bridge has gone,” said Mr Brathwaite, dropping the missionary question. “I thought it would. It should have been built ten feet higher from the first. This flood, though, is a flood, and no mistake. I only remember one like it.”“Ha, ha?” laughed Thorman, who was quite in a genial mood. “You should have seen Hicks pitching into a transport-rider. He doubled him up by the roadside like a ninepin.”“And how would he double up a ninepin, Mr Thorman?” queried Ethel, mischievously.Meanwhile, Hicks looked sheepish. “I couldn’t help it,” he said. “The fellow challenged me.”As predicted, the flood did an immense amount of damage. Every bridge was torn away by the force of the waters, as if it had been a bit of stick. Homesteads by the river-side flooded or swept away; gardens and corn lands swamped and utterly laid waste; every runnel or golly washed out as clean as a tube, the piles of drift-wood and rubbish, deposited here and there on their banks, alone showing the height to which the waters had risen. And when in a few days the rain ceased, and it was practicable to ascertain the fall extent of devastation—though even then in parts of theveldtit was impossible to ride with any safety or comfort, for a horse would sink knee-deep in the spongy soil—the land was noisome with the carcases of drowned animals, sheep and goats lying by tens and by twenties rotting in the sun in roadway and golly.Note 1. Hottentots with an admixture of white blood are thus known in Colonial parlance.

“Phew-w!” whistled Hicks, staring in consternation at the scene before him. Then he added in a determined voice: “But I’m going straight over that bridge or down the river, one of the two.”

“Umph! More fool you,” growled his companion. “I’m damned if I am.”

“But look here, Thorman. If we don’t get across now while we’ve a chance, Heaven only knows when we shall. The river’s ‘down’ as it has never been before, and all along the road we have heard nothing but how it’s coming down harder. Every blessed one of the bridges will go, and we shall be stuck on this side, it may be for weeks.”

Thorman made no reply, but sat on his horse scowling ferociously at the flood in front of them.

The spot was a drift on the Great Fish River crossed by an important main road which was one of the principal lines of transport up-country. Some years previously a fine bridge had been thrown across the bed of the river, which at that point was about fifty feet deep and twice the distance in width, thus rendering traffic independent of the rise or fall of the water or the state of the drift—at no time a first-rate one. But although the actual bed of the river was wide and deep, the stream itself was an insignificant trickle, dabbling along over stones, with here and there along sandy reach, after the manner of a North Country trout stream, but without its dash and sparkle. Except in rainy seasons; and then its red turbid waters, swelled by the contributions of numerous confluents and the drainings of the high watershed on either side, tore foaming between their high banks, carrying down drift-wood and trunks of trees in their swift pent-up course. But the bridge, a fine iron one, standing sixty feet from the bottom of the river to its parapet, rendered the transport-riders (carriers) absolutely independent of these floods, as has been said. Whether the stream was almost dry in its bed, or rolling down rocks and tree-stumps, mattered nothing to them now. Instead of the tedious delay of several days on the bank, and then the trouble and risk of crossing a bad, washed-out drift, their waggons rolled as gaily across the bridge as along the road, and they kept on their way as if there was no river there at all. Once or twice since the bridge had been built, the water had risen within a few feet of its roadway; but though an occasional prediction would be made that the river was capable of rising a great deal higher still, yet it had not done so. The bridge was of enormous strength, said they who were most concerned, and would stand against anything.

But now it seemed as if the predictions of disaster were going to be verified. For several days and nights it had rained incessantly; not a series of heavy deluging showers, but a steady, telling downpour. No break had occurred, not even a pause of ten minutes—rain, rain, rain, till people became as accustomed to the continuous fall upon their roofs of zinc or thatch as to the ticking of a clock—and the parched earth, now thoroughly soft and moistened, ran off the superfluous water in streams from every runnel and gully, which emptying themselves into the larger rivers, these in their turn came down in such force as to flood their banks, doing much and serious damage.

And the prospect before the two who sat there on their horses swathed from head to foot in long mackintoshes was, it must be allowed, sufficient justification for Thorman’s retort. An expanse of tossing, swirling water lay in front, and in the middle of this stood the bridge, or rather all that could be seen of it, for its roadway lay at least a foot beneath the surface. The banks of the river were overflowed to some distance, and here it was comparatively smooth; but in the middle the mighty stream rushed on its way with a dulling and ever deafening roar, rolling its huge red waves; curling, hissing, splashing; now heaving up a great tree-stump which, tossing for a moment, and leaping half out like a live thing, disappeared again in the boiling depths; now floating down the carcase of an ox or half-a-dozen drowned sheep. Against the bridge lay jammed an accumulation of drift-wood and logs, which groaned and grated with half-human shriek as the fierce current hurled itself continually upon the obstructing mass, which as yet it was unable to break through.

For sky, a pall of dark rain-cloud—heavy, opaque, and without a break anywhere—resting, in a regular line, low down upon the sides of the high hills on either side of the valley. Not a breath of wind to toss about the showers—nor, indeed, could the term shower apply. A downpour—straight, penetrating, and incessant. On the opposite bank of the river many waggons lay outspanned, their number augmenting as more kept on arriving in twos and fours from up-country, and the cracking of long whips, and the peculiar “carrying” yells of their drivers, were borne through the roar of the flood in front. Though early in the afternoon it was dark and gloomy, and the great rolling river, its red, turbid, hissing surface covered with evidences of damage and destruction, the lowering sky, the oppressive and woe-begone aspect of the surroundings, made up a picture of indescribable weirdness and threatening grandeur. The elements were supreme; man was nowhere.

“Oh, hang it, Thorman,” went on Hicks, impatiently. “You’re not afraid of a little water? I must get home to-night, and it’s now or never.”

The two had left some days earlier to attend a sale a good distance from home; for Hicks, as we have said, was an energetic fellow, and always alive to the main chance. The rain had just begun at the time they started; but they hadn’t bargained for this.

“Well, one damned fool makes two damned fools. Come along then,” growled Thorman. It would never do for it to be said he was afraid—and by a “Britisher,” too.

“That’s the sort, oldBaas. I knew you were humbugging,” rejoined Hicks, heartily. He would have gone through more than the present undertaking, though that was no child’s play, when he thought of the alternative—several days’ weary waiting at the wretched little inn just left behind. Why, one evening of it would be too awful. But things gain or suffer by comparison, and now the comparison lay between this contingency and Seringa Vale, a cheerful room, a snug home circle, and—Laura. So quite airily he prepared to risk his life, having persuaded his companion to follow his wise example.

A group of men stood at the water’s edge exchanging speculations on the probable turn of affairs, for a few waggons, bound up-country, lay outspanned on this side, though the large majority, coming down country, were on the opposite bank. They eyed the two travellers inquiringly.

“I say, Mister,” said a tall fellow, with a beard the size of a peacock’s tail, falling over his chest. “You’re never going to try and get through, are you?”

“We are going to do just that,” growled Thorman.

“We are not going to try, but we are going to get through,” asserted Hicks confidently.

“Well, I hope you may,” said the other, “but take my advice and don’t attempt it.”

“I’m going to attempt it, at any rate,” answered Hicks. “Thanks all the same.”

“Much better not,” said another sturdy purveyor. “Joe’s right. There’s nearly a yard of water on the bridge, and the thing’s been cracking and groaning under all that drift-wood. It’ll go any minute, I tell you. I wouldn’t go across for fifty pound. Besides, you’ve got to get to it first, and there’s a lot of water on either side. Better give it up.”

“Oh, I know the road all right, every inch of it,” was the reply. “Come along, Thorman.”

Fortunately for them they did know the road, for on either side of it lay deep fissures and gullies, now, of course, all under water. To flounder into one of these would be just better than getting into the river itself. Still it would be extremely dangerous.

“Well, good-bye,” called out the men on the bank as the two went plashing into the surging water. “So long! We shall meet in the next world.”

A jest which contained more than half the truth for all the likelihood of their ever meeting again in this, and so its utterers knew, perhaps better than the two on whose ears it fell; yet the rough, venturesome life led by these men rendered them reckless and indifferent in the face of danger. They could jest with Death, with his grim hand put out before them.

“Well, now we’re in for it you’d better let me go first,” said Thorman. “I know these rivers better than you do.”

Hicks acquiesced, and they plunged on. As they neared the bridge the current increased in strength, but not yet did they feel anything like its full force.

“Quick! Turn to your right,” shouted Thorman, wheeling his horse. His experienced eye detected one of those deep fissures above mentioned, into which his steed even then nearly slipped. A plunge and a splash, and he was on firm ground again, Hicks following.

And now, as they neared the bridge, the horses began to show signs of terror: snorting and tossing their heads, their eyes rolling wildly as they began to feel the effect of the swift, powerful current flowing round the great piers at the entrance to the bridge, and had the riders lost nerve their doom was sealed. And in truth the situation was somewhat awful, and well calculated to try the strongest nerves. Before them lay the submerged bridge, the water tearing over its roadway so as to hide it completely—to what depth they could hardly guess. Even Hicks began to repent of his headstrong rashness as he looked giddily at the red, heaving flood rearing up its great waves as it thundered against the bridge; but it was too late now, there was no turning back.

“So-ho, boy!—careful!—so-ho!” he cried, patting the neck of his frightened steed, which, terrified at the roar and rush of water through the ironwork, showed signs of backing; but the current upon the bridge shallowing after rather a deep plunge just before reaching it, in a measure reassured the animals.

“Don’t look at the river, Hicks; keep your eyes on your horse, and look only at where you’re going,” said Thorman, in a set, deep voice, speaking over his shoulder; but the warning was nearly lost in the deafening roar of the flood. Overhead, on either side, rose the parapet of the bridge, and, as they splashed along the submerged roadway, every now and then an uprooted tree or a huge stump would be hurled with an appalling crash upon the accumulation of drift-wood which lay against the quivering mass of ironwork. In one place the head of a drowned ox protruded through an aperture as though the animal were looking into a road; having been dashed there by the current, and its body being unable to follow. A bizarre and ghastly sight was this great head, with its fixed, glassy eyes, and yet living aspect, glaring from out of the ruin. But such things as these our adventurers saw as in a dream. All their attention was turned to their horses and their own safety. They could feel the huge structure quiver and shake as they passed along it, and ever in their ears was the stunning, deafening roar of the mighty flood as it boomed beneath and around them.

And now the worst was over. They had gained the other end of the bridge, but before them lay an expanse of submerged land, where the current, if not so strong and deep as on the side they had started from, was at any rate wide enough still to constitute a source of peril in the exhausted state of their steeds. But the bottom was a smooth gentle slope, free from any of the occasional cracks and fissures which had troubled them at first.

“Don’t stop, Hicks! Keep his headupthe stream. We’ll be through in a minute!” cried Thorman; and cramming his hat down, he settled himself firmer in the saddle, and struck into the open flood again.

But the horses knew that the worst was over, and kept up bravely, snorting and puffing like traction-engines as they struggled to maintain their footing in the swirling tide. As in a dream, the riders could see a crowd of men at the water’s edge; could hear their cheers of encouragement; then the resistance of the current slackened and ceased, and the exhausted animals walked despondently out, and stood, their dripping flanks panting and heaving, as Hicks and Thorman slid to the ground, little less done up than their steeds.

“I say—did you do that for a bet?” asked one of the crowd which had been standing ready to afford them what assistance they could, as well as to watch an event of some excitement, a perfect godsend to these men delayed there for many tedious days.

“No. Bet be damned,” growled Thorman. “I did it because that fool persuaded me to; and I wouldn’t do it again for a thousand pounds.”

“Oh, hang it, old man, don’t be shirty,” cried Hicks. “We are through now, you know, and the proof of the pudding’s in the eating. Besides, we’ve shown what our horses can do.”

“By the way, Mister, d’you care to part with that same animal?” said a tall, lank transport-rider, critically eyeing Hicks’ steed. “Because I want a horse that ain’t afraid o’ water. I have a lot of drift work to do at times, and that critter o’ yours ’ud just suit me. What’s the figure?”

“Well, no, I don’t,” answered Hicks. “It would be rather rough to get rid of him, just as he’s brought me through that, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, all right,” rejoined the other, good-humouredly, “I’d kind of taken a fancy to him, that’s all. When you do, just drop a line to John Kemp, Salem, Lower Albany.”

The two turned and waved their hats in response to a cheer which arose from the other side.

“Well, we shan’t meet in the next world yet, my friends,” remarked Hicks, with a laugh, referring to the last God-speed hurled after them as they began their perilous crossing. Then, leading their horses, they turned towards the roadside inn, which lay a couple of hundred yards from the river bank, and whose landlord, by reason of the presence of a number of men in a state of enforced idleness, was driving a roaring trade. The inn, or “hotel” as it was usually called, was, this afternoon, in a state of exceeding liveliness, for it was full of transport-riders, making merry—one or two of them, indeed, decidedly “cut,” and in that condition affording huge entertainment to the rest. Ordinarily a sober class of men, they were now indulging through sheerennui, being driven, as one of them expressed it, “to get on the spree in self-defence,” and to keep their spirits up. So the place rang with the boisterous mirth of many jovial souls, and the air was heavy with the fumes of grog and Boer tobacco which not all the open windows and the door sufficed to carry off. Hicks started, as a dog and an empty whisky-bottle shot past his legs at the same time in the doorway.

“Beg pardon, mate,” cried a giant in corduroy, from across the room, not moving from his place on a dingy sofa, where he sat wedged in among other boon companions. “Sims here bet me I couldn’t hit that Kafir cur on the side of the ear, the loser to stand drinks all round.”

“And, by jingo, you’ve lost,” rejoined Hicks, good-humouredly, “so we claim to cut in to the penalty.”

“Right you are,” cried the other, with a jolly laugh. “What’s it to be—‘French’—Whisky? All right. Here, Sims, whisky and soda for these gentlemen here; Hennessy for me,” and then followed much discussion and questioning among the rest as to what they would take, one rather surly fellow coming near to having his head punched for curtly declining to benefit by the general “treat.”

The hotel-keeper, a thin, wiry-looking man, with grey whiskers and a sharp face, now came forward.

“Where might you be from?” he began. “Want to off-saddle? You see I’m pretty busy just now,” he went on, as if apologising for the delay.

“Wemightbe from the bottom of the river, thanks to this fellow, and we don’twantto off-saddle, because we have,” growled Thorman. He was determined, characteristically, to make the worst of the situation, and resented having been made a fool of, as he phrased it, by Hicks.

“Why, it can’t be that you’ve come across the river?” cried the landlord in amazement.

“The devil it can’t! We have, though, unless we’ve gone down it and got into hell,” fiercely replied the other, with a contemptuous glance around; but the sulky rejoinder was received with a loud laugh by the boisterous but good-natured crew as a capital joke.

“Come through the river?” exclaimed a rough-looking fellow sitting close by. “Here, Mister, you and your friend must have a drink with me. What’s it to be?”

“No fear,” called out the thrower of the bottle. “The gentlemen are going to have one with me, Robins; they can have one with you after. Here, Sims, look alive, trundle up those drinks.”

“Keep your temper, Hallett,” replied the imperturbable landlord. “A man can’t wait on a dozen fellows at once, you see; and there are a precious deal more than a dozen of you here.”

“And devilish glad you are of that same, you old humbug,” retorted the other, cheerily.

“Tell you what it is,” an oracle of “the road” was saying in a loud voice, for the benefit of the assemblage. “That bridge’ll go, I say, before night; but, anyhow, it’s bound to go before morning.”

“Don’t know about that, Bill,” said another. “It’s a good strong bit of iron, and my opinion is that it’ll hold out.”

“It won’t, though. It’ll never stand the crush of drift-wood that’s against it now. And, mind you, the river’s coming down harder nor ever it was—I know. It’s raining like blazes up the country, far more’n it is here, and what with the Tarka and the Little Fish and half-a-dozen other streams besides, emptying into this, the bridge is bound to go. Mark my words.”

“Well, p’raps you’re right, Bill. We haven’t had such a flood as this in my time, and I’ve known this road, man and boy, for over fifty years. Still I should have thought the bridge’d stand. It’s a good bit of iron. But what do you say, Mister?” he added, appealing to Thorman. “You’ve just come over it, I hear.”

“What do I say? Why, that the damned thing won’t hold out till night,” was the gruff reply. “It jumped about like a twenty-foot swing while we were on it. And the fool that made it ought to be strapped upon it now, say I.”

“I’ve known one flood bigger than this, but that was before your time,” observed a wiry-looking little man, with white hair and a weasel-like face, self-complacent in the consciousness of having the pull over the two last speakers, and, indeed, over most of those present. “That was the time poor Owens was drowned. The river rose to within a foot of where we are sitting now before it went down again.”

“Who was Owens, and how was he drowned?” inquired Hicks, spotting an episode.

“Who was Owens?” repeated the old man, placidly filling his pipe. “A fool; because he thought he was smarter than any of us, and thought he could cross the river when we couldn’t. He went in on horseback. The river was running just as it was to-day, only not quite so deep. He went down, as a matter of course, before he was half-way through.”

“Couldn’t any of you help him?” asked Hicks.

The old fellow glanced up with a look of silent contempt for any one capable of putting such a question. Then he calmly struck a match and lighted his pipe, and having done so he continued:

“The river was full of drift-wood, and we saw one big tree bearing down upon Owens full swing. We hollered out to warn him, but the water was kicking up such a row that he couldn’t hear, nor would it have helped him much if he had. Well, the tree came bang against him, entangling him and the horse in the branches. They rolled over and over; and tree, and horse, and Owens disappeared. We never saw him again, but the next I heard of him was that his body had been found a week afterwards, when the water had run off, sticking in the bed of the river, among the drift-wood down Peddie way.”

“Poor devil,” exclaimed several of his auditors.

“No one but a fool would have gone into the river at all,” concluded the old man, sententiously, as he tossed off the remainder of his grog.

“I say, Thorman, we must be going,” said Hicks.

“All right,” replied that worthy, knocking the ashes out of his pipe and rising to his feet.

“Oh, but you needn’t be off yet,” objected he addressed as Hallett. “Stay here with us and make a night of it; you can go on in the morning.”

But Hicks was firm. It was not for this he had risked his life.

“Awfully sorry, old man, but I must get back to-night.”

“Hang it! Well, then, have another drink—just an ‘off-setter,’” persisted the other. “No? Well, then, good-bye. If you’re round my way any time, mind you give us a look up. We’ll get up a buck hunt, and some fun of some sort. Ta, ta! Take care of yourself. But you’re well able to do that now, I should think.”

They settled for their horses’ forage, and going round to the stable, saddled-up, and were soon on their way; the steeds, after a good feed and a rub down, looking none the worse for their gallant efforts in crossing the perilous flood. And a carious sight was that which the neighbourhood of the drift presented as they rode forth. In every direction waggons were outspanned, standing in rows of six or seven, or in twos and threes, according to the number owned by or in charge of any one man, but everywhere waggons. A few were empty, but most of them were loaded high up with wool-bales, sent from up-country stores to the seaboard—or with hides, and horns, or other produce—for it was before the days of railroads, and the carrying trade was abundant and thriving. Their owners stood about in knots, watching the gathering flood; others passed to and from the inn. Some again sat stolidly by their fires smoking their pipes as they waited for the pot to boil, while a cloud of native servants—drivers and leaders—hung about the canteen or lolled by the fires, the deep bass of the manly Kafir mingling with the shrill chatter of Hottentots and Bastards (Note 1). A kind of twilight had come on prematurely, by reason of the lowering sky, and the red watch-fires glowed forth, and the crowd of waggons, considerably over a hundred, standing about, gave the place the appearance of a mining-camp, or a commissariat train halted while on the march. And every now and then, more waggons would come lumbering over the rise, the cracking of whips and the harsh yells of their drivers echoing through the heavy air.

“Hi! Here! Where the hell are you coming to? Can’t you keep the right side of the road, instead of the side of the bullocks, damn you?”

The voice proceeded from an unkempt and perspiring individual, in flannel shirt and corduroy trousers, who, wielding his long whip, walked beside a full span of sixteen oxen, the motive power of a mighty load of wool-bales. So insolent and aggressive was it in its tone, that even good-natured Hicks, to whom the query was addressed, and than whom a less quarrelsome fellow never lived, was moved to anger, and answered the incensed transport-rider pretty much in the same strain.

“Oh, so you think I ought to get out ofyourway, do you?” roared the other.

“I think you might be civil, confound it all!” fumed Hicks.

“Suppose I ought to say ‘sir,’ eh?” went on the other, in wrathful, sneering tones.

“Oh, go to the devil,” cried Hicks, fairly boiling over; “I’ve no time to stay jawing here all night with you,” he added, contemptuously, making as if he would ride on.

“Haven’t you? Just get down; I’ll soon show you who’s the best hand at jawing, and at hitting, too. Come down here and try, if you’re not a blanked coward!” yelled the fellow. He thought that the other was afraid of him; but he reckoned without his host.

“Oh, that’s your game, is it?” cried Hicks, springing to the ground, and throwing off his mackintosh. “Come on, I’m your Moses.” And he advanced towards the irate transport-rider, looking him fall in the eyes.

The fellow, who now saw that he had a tough customer to deal with, began to repent of his hastiness, and would fain have backed out of the scrape into which his insolent, overbearing temper had led him, but it was too late to decline the contest, for several of his contemporaries, attracted by the prospect of a row, had gathered round. So he rushed at his opponent, hitting out blindly, right and left. But Hicks, who knew something of “the art of self-defence,” and was of sturdy, powerful build besides, found no difficulty in parrying this unscientific attack. Then with a well-planted “one—two,” straight from the shoulder, he landed his adversary in a heap on the slippery, trodden-down grass by the roadside.

“He’s down—give him law,” cried one of the bystanders. “Who is it? What’s it all about?”

“Dick Martin,” answered another voice. “He cheeked t’other fellow, or t’other fellow cheeked him, it don’t matter which; so they’re having it out. Get up, Dick, and go in at him again.”

But Dick manifested no such inclination. He raised himself half up and sat glowering stupidly around, as if dazed. His nose was bleeding, and a huge lump over his eye betokened pretty plainly that he would wake on the morrow with that useful organ somewhat obscured.

“Never mind. Get up and have another try, man,” called out the last speaker.

“He can’t; he’s had enough. T’other’s been one too many for him,” said some one else. And he had.

Hicks, who was far too good-hearted a fellow to exult over a fallen foe, however great the provocation received, said nothing. He lingered a moment to see if his adversary would show any sign of renewing battle, and then began to mount his horse. Just then a loud shout went up from the water’s edge about four hundred yards below them. All turned.

“The bridge! It’s going!” cried some one.

The spot where they stood, being on an eminence, overlooked the river, and they could see the strong ironwork of the parapet bend to the ponderous mass of accumulated drift-wood heaped against it. It yielded—then snapped; and with a thunder-crash sounding loud above the continuous roar of the flood, the vast obstruction ofdébrisbore it down. A huge wave reared its head many feet in the air, and fell with a mighty hiss, covering the rushing surface with seething foam. Then, the obstruction removed, the mighty river hurled itself forward, its horrible, many-tongued voices bellowing as if in savage joy at having overthrown and defeated the works of human ingenuity. All that could now be seen of the once fine bridge was a few strands of twisted ironwork clinging about what remained of the piers at each of its ends.

“Let’s give the old bridge three cheers,” cried one of the spectators. “She’s been a good friend to us, and now we shall be put about as we were before for the want of her.”

They did so; and a great shout went up from the outspan, echoing far along the sides of the darkening hills, where the lowering rain-clouds rested in an unbroken pall. The bridge had been a good friend to them, and now it was gone they would sorely feel the want of it for some time to come, until another should replace it, which might not be for years. So they cheered right heartily; but with a feeling of genuine regret.

Meanwhile, at Seringa Vale, everything was at a standstill. The stock was kept at home, and in the soaked kraals the sheep stood huddled together, stolidly chewing the cad, and looking very forlorn in the dripping rain. But their owner’s watchful eye was everywhere, as, wrapped in a waterproof coat, he moved about, noting where it became necessary to cut a channel for the drainage of a fast accumulating body of water which threatened damage, and all hands would be turned out with spade and pick for this and such like duty. Even he was more than satisfied with the rainfall this time, and now and then cast an anxious look at the weather quarter.

“I don’t think I ever saw the kloof so full as this before, and it’s still rising,” he said.

“No?” answered Claverton, who was meditatively jerking a pebble or two across the broad, surging rush of water in front of them. “All the rivers in the country must be tolerably well down. Why, the bridges will never stand.”

“No, they won’t. If it goes on like this till morning there won’t be a bridge left in the country, that’s my opinion. There’ll be a heap of damage done besides. Well, we can’t do anything more now, and it’s getting dark,” and they turned towards the house.

Very cosy and cheerful looked the interior of that domicile, as a few minutes later, Claverton found his way thither, and got into dry clothes. No one was about—wait—yes—there was some one in the inner room. It was Lilian. She had been reading, and was seated by the window with her book open in her hand, just as the twilight and then the darkness had surprised her.

“Trying to read in the dark? Worst thing possible for the eyes,” he said. “What have you been doing with yourself all day?”

She turned to him.

“Very much what you see me doing now—reading and—dreaming.”

“The best possible occupation for a day like this. I’ve been doing the latter—dreaming,” he said.

“You? Why, you have been hard at work all day,” said she. “I’ve been watching you walking about in the rain with a spade, and pitying you for being so uncomfortable, while we were all sitting indoors, dry and warm.”

“Pitying me?”

“To any extent,” she answered, looking up at him with a bright smile.

He bent over her. “Yes, I was dreaming—of such a moment as this.”

She did not answer. Her eyes were fixed on the gloom without and the soft falling rain. Oh, the continuous drip, drip of that ceaseless rain throughout this livelong day, turning the daylight into dusk, and beating time in her heart to the echoes of the past! And throughout it all was a vague, indefinable longing for this man’s presence. The enforced imprisonment in the house had been doubly irksome without him, and at last she had been constrained to own it to herself. Once she had seen him coming towards the door, and all unconsciously had made ready such a bright smile of welcome; but he had turned back, and the smile had faded, and a chill, sickly feeling around her heart had taken its place. What right had she to feel thus, she thought? In a few weeks they would part as friends, acquaintances, nothing more, and then—well, at any rate he knew the worst. But now as he found her in the darkening twilight, her heart gave a bound, and her voice assumed a dangerous tenderness as she replied to him.

“The rain has been very cruel,” he went on. “I couldn’t catch so much as one stray glimpse throughout the whole afternoon. If you are blockaded indoors, you might look out of the window now and then.”

“Why, I’ve done nothing else. And you, did you get very wet?” And there is a little inflection as of anxiety in her voice as she raises her eyes to his.

“Don’t let’s talk about me, but about a far more interesting subject—yourself. Haven’t you been frightfully bored to-day?”

“Well, I have rather—at least, I mean, I oughtn’t to say that, but one gets rather low sometimes, you know, even without much cause, and I’ve been so to-day,” she answered, her tone relapsing into one of dejection, and he, standing there beside her, began to feel deliriously happy, though well knowing that it was for the moment. But the gloaming was about them, and they were alone together. What more could he—could they—want?

A light flashed from the other room; then a sound of voices. It was not exactly a blessing that Claverton gulped down, as some one was heard calling:

“Lilian. Are you there? It’s supper-time. Why, what has become of her?” added the voice, parenthetically.

Lilian started as if from a reverie. “Here I am,” and she rose hastily. Claverton was not the only one who watched her as she came out into the light, but the serene, beautiful face was as calm and unmoved as if she had been in their midst all the time.

Very cheerful and homelike looked the lighted room, and the table with its hissing tea-urn, and knives and forks and dish-covers sparkling on the snowy cloth. Very bright and exhilarating in contrast to the wet, chill gloom without, and to those two, who had been at work in the rain all day, especially so.

“The flood will do no end of damage,” Mr Brathwaite was saying, as he began to make play with the carving-knife. “There’ll be lots of stock swept away, I fear, and the homesteads along the river banks stand a good chance of following.”

“That’s cheerful, for their owners,” remarked Claverton. “I should think old Garthorpe’s place would be one of the first to go.”

“Serve him right, I was nearly saying. He doesn’t deserve to own a good farm like that—always preaching to the Kafirs instead of looking after it.”

“Is he a missionary?” asked Lilian.

“No. He ought to be, though. He’s quite humbug enough.”

“Tsh!” laughed Mrs Brathwaite. “Lilian will think you a regular heathen.”

“Can’t help it,” retorted the old man. “I know what I’m talking about, which is more than everybody does who professes to give an opinion on the subject. Any grocer’s boy, who in England would never get further than a shop-counter, makes a fine good trade of it by coming out here to ‘preach the Gospel’ to the heathen. It’s less trouble and pays infinitely better. What is the consequence? Kafirland is chock-full of bumptious, uneducated, hypocritical scamps, who live on the fat of the land, and are never happy unless meddling with what doesn’t concern them. All the disturbances which crop up from time to time, are hatched and fomented by these rascals. Call themselves teachers, indeed! What do they teach their lambs? To keep their hands off their neighbours’ property? Not a bit of it. And what missionary ever stuck to his post when war did break out, I should like to know? Not one. They clear out in time to save their own skins, never fear, and sneak off to befool the British public, while we are defending our lives and property. A set of meddlesome, mischief-brewing, slander-mongering frauds. They are the curse of the colony.”

On this congenial theme the old man continued to descant for some time. Then the tread of horses was heard outside, and the arrival of Hicks and Thorman created a diversion.

“So the bridge has gone,” said Mr Brathwaite, dropping the missionary question. “I thought it would. It should have been built ten feet higher from the first. This flood, though, is a flood, and no mistake. I only remember one like it.”

“Ha, ha?” laughed Thorman, who was quite in a genial mood. “You should have seen Hicks pitching into a transport-rider. He doubled him up by the roadside like a ninepin.”

“And how would he double up a ninepin, Mr Thorman?” queried Ethel, mischievously.

Meanwhile, Hicks looked sheepish. “I couldn’t help it,” he said. “The fellow challenged me.”

As predicted, the flood did an immense amount of damage. Every bridge was torn away by the force of the waters, as if it had been a bit of stick. Homesteads by the river-side flooded or swept away; gardens and corn lands swamped and utterly laid waste; every runnel or golly washed out as clean as a tube, the piles of drift-wood and rubbish, deposited here and there on their banks, alone showing the height to which the waters had risen. And when in a few days the rain ceased, and it was practicable to ascertain the fall extent of devastation—though even then in parts of theveldtit was impossible to ride with any safety or comfort, for a horse would sink knee-deep in the spongy soil—the land was noisome with the carcases of drowned animals, sheep and goats lying by tens and by twenties rotting in the sun in roadway and golly.

Note 1. Hottentots with an admixture of white blood are thus known in Colonial parlance.

Back to IndexNext