Volume Two—Chapter Sixteen.Face to Face.They buried poor Jack Armitage in the afternoon, and all turned out to render the last honours to their departed comrade. Brathwaite’s Horse, with arms reversed, formed the principal guard of honour, the improvised bier being borne by the dead man’s most intimate friends. All the Dutch burghers followed in thecortège, and, hovering around in dark groups, the men of the Fingo Levies gazed curiously but respectfully upon the white man’s burial. No surpliced priest stood to hallow this newly-made grave in the wilderness, or speak the commendatory words; but all the solemnity which real feeling could impart was supplied in the demeanour of these rough bands of armed horsemen, pacing along so silent, and orderly, and mournful.The grave had been dug beneath a couple of euphorbia trees, upon a green knoll commanding a lovely view of hill and dale, and sweeping grassland and distant mountain, all blending into one soft picture in the golden lustre of the afternoon sun. The steady tramp of hoof-strokes ceased as the horsemen ranged themselves in a semicircle around the grave, and there was dead silence. All uncovered as Jim Brathwaite, who, as senior commander and the dead man’s intimate friend, had been unanimously voted to the duty, began to read—in the subdued and serious voice of one wholly unaccustomed to the performance of such offices—the Anglican burial service. At its close a firing party stepped forward, and a threefold volley sounded forth upon the hushened air, rolling its echoes afar, till the Amaxosa warriors, listening from their tangled fastnesses to its distant thunder, told each other, with grim satisfaction, that the English must be burying one of their principal captains.So poor Jack Armitage was laid to rest there in his lonely grave amid the sunny wilds of Kaffraria, and a gloom hung over the camp because of the cheerful spirit taken from its midst.That evening they were joined by the other column, forming part of which was Claverton’s old corps. It happened that Lumley, who had been given the provisional command on the transfer of his chief, was in hot water. An excellent subordinate, he was quite unfit for a wholly responsible position, and, as was disgustedly said by those on whom his mistakes had nearly entailed serious disaster, he had made an utter mess of it. Consequently he had been superseded, and was daily expecting the arrival of the man appointed to take his place. “Quite a new hand,” as he said, in an injured tone; “a fellow only just out from England.” All this he told Claverton, seated that evening in the latter’s tent, where he had come to pour out his grievances. He would clear out, he vowed, and let the beastly war go to the deuce. Naylor was also present.“Don’t do anything rash, Lumley. Wait and see who the new fellow is,” was Claverton’s advice. “You and I had very good fun together, and so may you and he. It isn’t all walnuts and Madeira being in command, I can tell you. Anyhow, I found it quite within my conscience to throw over mine in favour of subordinacy—and am not sorry. No, believe me, responsibility’s a mistake except for the gifted few; and you and I can have a much better time of it playing second fiddle.”With such arguments he soothed the other’s wounded spirit, and at length persuaded him that so far from feeling ill-used he ought to rejoice.“’Pon my soul, I believe you’re right,” was poor Lumley’s parting remark, made in a tone of intense relief, partly owing to his former chief’s friendliness and encouragement, partly—it may be—the result of a couple of glasses of grog warming the cockles of his heart. “But I wish it was you they were going to put back again, Claverton. It would be all right then. Good-night—good-night,” and he went out.“Poor Lumley,” remarked Claverton, after he had left. “I’m sorry for him; but he’s no more fit to be at the head of a body of men than I am to command the Channel Fleet.”“H’m, isn’t he?” said Naylor. “At any rate you have sent him away in quite a contented frame of mind. I was watching the process leading up to it, somewhat narrowly.”Claverton laughed. “Oh, I can always talk over a fool, that is, an ordinary one, when it’s worth while taking the trouble, which in this case it is, for Lumley’s a good fellow in most ways. But I can’t talk over the fool blatant, for he is too overwhelmed with a sense of his own infallibility to give the slightest attention to any one else’s suggestions. By the way, I must go across and see Jim Brathwaite. Will you come, or would you rather stay here? Our ‘business’ won’t take a minute.”“I may as well walk across,” and they went out. On arrival at Jim’s tent, however, that redoubted warrior was not there.“Probably making a night of it with some of the fellows who have just come,” was Claverton’s remark. “Ah, here’s what I want,” pouncing upon a bit of blue paper which lay ostentatiously upon an old packing-case, and was directed to himself. “Now we’ll go back.”The night was moonless and rather dark, for a curtain of cloud had drifted across the sky; here and there one or two stars twinkled through its rifts, and the outline of the sombre ridge beyond was scarcely visible. All was quiet in the camp, the voices of the men made a kind of monotonous hum, and now and then a laugh arose from some centre of jollity for the time being.A light burned in Claverton’s tent as they were about to enter, and, pausing for a moment, the figures of the two men were thrown out into full relief.Crack!A bright jet shoots out of the gloom just beneath the shadowy outline of the ridge overlooking the camp, and the sharp report rolls away in dull echo upon the night. Then another flash, and, amid the roar that follows, Claverton and his companion both experience a strange, jarring sensation, for a bullet has passed, with a shrill whiz, between them, narrowly missing the head of either.“Good shot that, whoever it is,” remarked Naylor, coolly, while his companion, who had quickly extinguished the light, was by his side again. “There’ll be tall cannonading for the next half-hour, and tolerably wild shooting, too.”And there was. The effect of the double shot upon that camp—which fancied itself so secure—was marvellous. In a moment every man had seized his piece, and was standing eagerly peering into the gloom in the direction of the shot—and not merely that, for many discharged their weapons haphazard—and presently, as Naylor had said, the cannonading waxed alarming. The frontier corps, beyond a few shots fired on the impulse of the moment, had remained cool; they knew the futility of blazing at random into the darkness, and had too much respect for themselves and their reputation to be made the subject of a practical joke played by one or two skulking Kafirs. But the camps of the Fingo and Hottentot levies were like a disturbed ants’ nest; and heeding the voices of their officers no more than the wind, those startled and panic-stricken auxiliaries poured a terrific fire into the darkness, and the air was aflame with the flash of their wild, reckless volleys as they blazed away—round after round—as fast as ever they could reload. It was in vain that their officers strove to restrain them—their voices were lost in the constant bellow of musketry. Now and then they would knock down a refractory nigger or two within reach, but it had no effect upon the others, and confusion reigned supreme.“Well, Lumley, here’s a lively kettle of fish.”He addressed, turned, perspiring and despairing in his frantic attempts to restore order.“Good God! Claverton, is that you? Now just look at these damned fools. Drop that, will you?” he roared, bestowing a violent kick on one of his men who was blazing away without even bringing his piece to his shoulder. The fellow gave a yell of pain and made off.At length the confusion began to abate. Seeing no further sign of an attack upon the camp, and their ammunition having decreased alarmingly, the native auxiliaries ceased firing by degrees, each man, as he did so, sneaking off looking very much ashamed of himself.“Damned fools, in sooth,” assented Claverton, when the uproar had calmed down. “But, Lumley, I wish you’d just turn up that fellow Smith—Vargas Smith. There’s something I want to see him about at once.”“Certainly. Here, pass the word there for Corporal Smith,” he called out.“Oh, he’s promoted, then?”“Well, yes. A sharp fellow, you know; helps me no end.”But Corporal Smith was not forthcoming. He was nowhere to be found, in fact. He was not on guard, for he had been in the camp not long before the alarm, they said, but now there was no trace of him.“How long before?”Well, it might have been half an hour since he was seen, certainly not much more.“Not less?”No, not less. On that point they were all ready to swear.“Even as I suspected,” thought Claverton to himself. And he waited some time longer talking to Lumley, and ironically bantering some of his former men for their contribution to the recent chaos.“A set of smart fellows you are, eh, old Cobus?” he said, addressing one of the sergeants. “Blazing away all night at the stars and bushes.”“Nay what, kaptyn,” rejoined the old Hottentot, shamefacedly. “You see a lot of us shooting like that must hit somebody. We shall find many of theschelmslying there in the morning.”“Many of theschelms? Devil a bit. One or two of your own sentries, perhaps.”“No—Kafirs, kaptyn.”“Bah. There won’t be a leaf or a twig left on the bushes within a circle of two miles, perhaps, but if you find a single Kafir lying within it, I’ll engage to eat him.”There was a roar of laughter, half deprecatory, half of intense amusement, from the group of listeners who had drawn near, at this sarcastic hit. But just then a diversion occurred in the shape of the reappearance of the missing Corporal Smith.“Hallo, Smith; where the devil have you been?” cried Lumley.“Been on guard, sir,” was the reply, in a tone which seemed to add, “and now shut up.”“You weren’t told off.”“I went because they said Gert Flinders was ill, and I took his place,” he said, with a touch of defiance.Claverton, meanwhile, eyed him narrowly. Two impressions were present to his mind—one, the extremely loose state of discipline into which Lumley had let the corps drift; the other, which more nearly concerned himself, the evident anxiety of the Cuban mulatto to avoid further questioning. He noticed also, with one keen, swift glance, that that worthy wore a pair of new veldtschoens.“By the way, on second thoughts it doesn’t matter to-night,” he said, carelessly. “To-morrow will do just as well, Smith. It’s late now, and it’s best to get things ship-shape after the row. Good-night, Lumley,” he added. “Come round and feed to-morrow night if we are still here,” and he went away.By the time Claverton reached his tent all was quiet again. His companion had turned in, and was sleeping as unconcernedly as if beneath the roof of an English dwelling instead of having narrowly escaped being shot through the head by a nocturnal foe in the wilds of Kafirland. He hastened to turn in likewise, but not to sleep. Instinct led him to connect this last attempt upon his life with some evil hovering over himself and Lilian. For that he was the intended mark of the assassin’s bullet he had known the moment it was fired.While it was yet dark Claverton left the camp quietly, and the first glimmer of dawn saw him narrowly searching for the spot whence the shot had been fired. It took him nearly an hour, but he found it at last. And he found something more: he found three distinct footmarks—the print of a pair of new veldtschoens—in the damp soil, for a heavy dew had fallen in the night; and furthermore, sticking among the thorns, the tiny fragment of a flannel shirt of peculiar pattern. And a vindictive light came into the blue-grey eyes as he walked straight back to camp, murmuring to himself complacently:“Just so—just as I suspected! Mr Corporal Vargas Smith—aliasSharkey—you have chosen to throw away your life again, and now, if you are above ground in six weeks at the outside from to-day, may I be beneath it!”For a moment the resolve seized him to have the ruffian arrested. There was abundant evidence to convict him before a drum-head court-martial, but then the heads of the field forces would inevitably shrink from administering the extreme penalty; and besides, the question of motive must arise, which would be an inconvenient thing to be ventilated in public just then. No; the safest and best plan would be to pay the assassin in his own coin; and, strong-headed and unscrupulous in such a case as this, Claverton doubted not his ability to discharge the debt with interest.He reached his tent in time to find a trooper dismounting there. The man looked hot, dusty, and tired, having ridden express from Cathcart with letters and despatches for the camp. Saluting, he handed a telegram to Claverton and withdrew. The latter held the ominous missive for a moment, regarding it with a blank stare, then, with a jerk, tore it open, and, at the first glimpse of its purport, his face became ashy. This is what he saw:FromPayne, Grahamstown.ToClaverton, Brathwaite’s Horse, Colonial Forces in Gaika Location, via Cathcart.Come at once, and at all risks. No cause for alarm, but come.He looked at the date. The message had been handed in two days before, and had been lying at Cathcart for lack of an opportunity of transport. The words swam before his eyes, and his blood ran cold with a chill fear. This brooding presentiment, then, had not come upon him for nothing. Handing his companion the telegram, he strode to the door and called for Sam.“’Nkos?” and the native came running up with alacrity.“Saddle-up Fleck and the young horse, Sam, and be ready to start in half an hour at the outside.”“Yeh bo, ’Nkos,” replied Sam, too well accustomed to his master’s ways to be astonished at anything; and he retired to carry out his orders.Quickly Claverton went over to arrange with Jim Brathwaite for his absence, and long before the appointed time he was ready to start. He fidgeted about, looking at his watch every moment; and lo, just three minutes short of the half-hour his retainer appeared with the two horses.“My dear fellow, don’t give a thought to me,” said Naylor, warmly, in response to his explanations of this sudden departure. “I shall make myself comfortable while you are away, never fear. Now, don’t delay any longer. Your duty shall be looked after all right,” he added, and with a close hand grip he bade his friend farewell.Claverton, with his trusty follower, sped on across the hostile ground, every yard of which might conceal a foe; but of this he took less than no heed. All his thoughts were ahead of him by the hundred and odd miles or so which he had to traverse. His plan was to change horses half-way, leaving Sam to follow at leisure, once they were well out of the localities where they might fall in with roving bands of the enemy; and to push on, even if he killed his steed in the undertaking. Away in the blue heavens clouds of vultures, the ubiquitous scavengers of Southern Africa, were visible, poised above the scene of the late conflict; and these grew fainter and fainter, till they were lost to view in the far distance, and the sun began to decline in the west as the travellers kept steadily on over hill and dale, carefully eschewing short cuts and keeping to the beaten track. Once they were descried by a group of Kafir scouts, who, from their position on a hill-top, opened fire at long range, and of course ineffectually.“Sam,” exclaimed Claverton, as they were saddling up to continue their road, after a short halt, “there’s a devil of a storm coming up. Look there.”The native glanced upwards. “There is, Inkos,” he replied; “but we may just ride through it and escape.”Great inky clouds were gathering with alarming rapidity, and hastening to unite themselves to the dense black pall which drew on, silent, spectral, and gigantic, over the mountain-tops, and a dull, muffled roar boomed nearer and nearer between the fitful puffs of hot wind which fanned the travellers’ faces. And now the scene was a weird one indeed. They were just entering a long defile—for they had reached the mountains—and along the rugged crags of the lonely heights towering above on either side, the red flashes were playing. Higher and higher piled the solid cloud-masses, and a few large drops of rain began to patter upon the stones. The gloom deepened, and all Nature was hushed as if in preparation for the coming battle of the elements.Hark! Was that the ring of a horse’s hoof far down the pass? No. Not a human creature is abroad in this awesome place to-night, with the black, brooding storm overhead, and the clans of the savage enemy besetting every step of the road with peril. A huge bird of prey soars away from one of the desolate crags, uttering a hoarse, long-drawn cry like the wailing of a lost soul. It is pitch dark. Then a flash lights up the road, and Claverton, profiting by it, peers anxiously ahead.“Come along, Sam. There’s a smooth bit here, anyhow, and we can get over a good stride of ground,” and, spurring up his horse, away he goes at a long, even canter, with the Natal boy close behind him striving to keep up; and the sparks fly from beneath the horses’ hoofs as they dash on through the night. A roll of thunder—long, heavy, and appalling—peals through the pass, a vivid flash of plum-coloured flame, and Claverton suddenly reins in his steed—who, with a snort of terror, rears and shies—just in time to avoid charging headlong into another horseman advancing at an equally rapid pace from the contrary direction, and who also reins in with a jerk. A powerfully-built, dark-featured man who stifles a half-spoken ejaculation; but beyond that neither speak.What is the spell thrown over these two as they sit their horses gazing at each other in the lightning’s horrible, scathing gleam in that gloomy pass? Is it an instinct? It is more. In that one vivid flash occupying not a second of time, Claverton has recognised in this sudden apparition the man whom he had seen and heard in the deserted hut, deliberately instigating his assassination. He recognises something more. As, with a muttered “good-night,” the other passes on into the gloom, the lightning flashes again, revealing upon his bridle-hand a curious ring. It is an exact facsimile of the lost ring which glittered in the moonbeams beneath the old pear-tree on that last night at Seringa Vale.
They buried poor Jack Armitage in the afternoon, and all turned out to render the last honours to their departed comrade. Brathwaite’s Horse, with arms reversed, formed the principal guard of honour, the improvised bier being borne by the dead man’s most intimate friends. All the Dutch burghers followed in thecortège, and, hovering around in dark groups, the men of the Fingo Levies gazed curiously but respectfully upon the white man’s burial. No surpliced priest stood to hallow this newly-made grave in the wilderness, or speak the commendatory words; but all the solemnity which real feeling could impart was supplied in the demeanour of these rough bands of armed horsemen, pacing along so silent, and orderly, and mournful.
The grave had been dug beneath a couple of euphorbia trees, upon a green knoll commanding a lovely view of hill and dale, and sweeping grassland and distant mountain, all blending into one soft picture in the golden lustre of the afternoon sun. The steady tramp of hoof-strokes ceased as the horsemen ranged themselves in a semicircle around the grave, and there was dead silence. All uncovered as Jim Brathwaite, who, as senior commander and the dead man’s intimate friend, had been unanimously voted to the duty, began to read—in the subdued and serious voice of one wholly unaccustomed to the performance of such offices—the Anglican burial service. At its close a firing party stepped forward, and a threefold volley sounded forth upon the hushened air, rolling its echoes afar, till the Amaxosa warriors, listening from their tangled fastnesses to its distant thunder, told each other, with grim satisfaction, that the English must be burying one of their principal captains.
So poor Jack Armitage was laid to rest there in his lonely grave amid the sunny wilds of Kaffraria, and a gloom hung over the camp because of the cheerful spirit taken from its midst.
That evening they were joined by the other column, forming part of which was Claverton’s old corps. It happened that Lumley, who had been given the provisional command on the transfer of his chief, was in hot water. An excellent subordinate, he was quite unfit for a wholly responsible position, and, as was disgustedly said by those on whom his mistakes had nearly entailed serious disaster, he had made an utter mess of it. Consequently he had been superseded, and was daily expecting the arrival of the man appointed to take his place. “Quite a new hand,” as he said, in an injured tone; “a fellow only just out from England.” All this he told Claverton, seated that evening in the latter’s tent, where he had come to pour out his grievances. He would clear out, he vowed, and let the beastly war go to the deuce. Naylor was also present.
“Don’t do anything rash, Lumley. Wait and see who the new fellow is,” was Claverton’s advice. “You and I had very good fun together, and so may you and he. It isn’t all walnuts and Madeira being in command, I can tell you. Anyhow, I found it quite within my conscience to throw over mine in favour of subordinacy—and am not sorry. No, believe me, responsibility’s a mistake except for the gifted few; and you and I can have a much better time of it playing second fiddle.”
With such arguments he soothed the other’s wounded spirit, and at length persuaded him that so far from feeling ill-used he ought to rejoice.
“’Pon my soul, I believe you’re right,” was poor Lumley’s parting remark, made in a tone of intense relief, partly owing to his former chief’s friendliness and encouragement, partly—it may be—the result of a couple of glasses of grog warming the cockles of his heart. “But I wish it was you they were going to put back again, Claverton. It would be all right then. Good-night—good-night,” and he went out.
“Poor Lumley,” remarked Claverton, after he had left. “I’m sorry for him; but he’s no more fit to be at the head of a body of men than I am to command the Channel Fleet.”
“H’m, isn’t he?” said Naylor. “At any rate you have sent him away in quite a contented frame of mind. I was watching the process leading up to it, somewhat narrowly.”
Claverton laughed. “Oh, I can always talk over a fool, that is, an ordinary one, when it’s worth while taking the trouble, which in this case it is, for Lumley’s a good fellow in most ways. But I can’t talk over the fool blatant, for he is too overwhelmed with a sense of his own infallibility to give the slightest attention to any one else’s suggestions. By the way, I must go across and see Jim Brathwaite. Will you come, or would you rather stay here? Our ‘business’ won’t take a minute.”
“I may as well walk across,” and they went out. On arrival at Jim’s tent, however, that redoubted warrior was not there.
“Probably making a night of it with some of the fellows who have just come,” was Claverton’s remark. “Ah, here’s what I want,” pouncing upon a bit of blue paper which lay ostentatiously upon an old packing-case, and was directed to himself. “Now we’ll go back.”
The night was moonless and rather dark, for a curtain of cloud had drifted across the sky; here and there one or two stars twinkled through its rifts, and the outline of the sombre ridge beyond was scarcely visible. All was quiet in the camp, the voices of the men made a kind of monotonous hum, and now and then a laugh arose from some centre of jollity for the time being.
A light burned in Claverton’s tent as they were about to enter, and, pausing for a moment, the figures of the two men were thrown out into full relief.
Crack!
A bright jet shoots out of the gloom just beneath the shadowy outline of the ridge overlooking the camp, and the sharp report rolls away in dull echo upon the night. Then another flash, and, amid the roar that follows, Claverton and his companion both experience a strange, jarring sensation, for a bullet has passed, with a shrill whiz, between them, narrowly missing the head of either.
“Good shot that, whoever it is,” remarked Naylor, coolly, while his companion, who had quickly extinguished the light, was by his side again. “There’ll be tall cannonading for the next half-hour, and tolerably wild shooting, too.”
And there was. The effect of the double shot upon that camp—which fancied itself so secure—was marvellous. In a moment every man had seized his piece, and was standing eagerly peering into the gloom in the direction of the shot—and not merely that, for many discharged their weapons haphazard—and presently, as Naylor had said, the cannonading waxed alarming. The frontier corps, beyond a few shots fired on the impulse of the moment, had remained cool; they knew the futility of blazing at random into the darkness, and had too much respect for themselves and their reputation to be made the subject of a practical joke played by one or two skulking Kafirs. But the camps of the Fingo and Hottentot levies were like a disturbed ants’ nest; and heeding the voices of their officers no more than the wind, those startled and panic-stricken auxiliaries poured a terrific fire into the darkness, and the air was aflame with the flash of their wild, reckless volleys as they blazed away—round after round—as fast as ever they could reload. It was in vain that their officers strove to restrain them—their voices were lost in the constant bellow of musketry. Now and then they would knock down a refractory nigger or two within reach, but it had no effect upon the others, and confusion reigned supreme.
“Well, Lumley, here’s a lively kettle of fish.”
He addressed, turned, perspiring and despairing in his frantic attempts to restore order.
“Good God! Claverton, is that you? Now just look at these damned fools. Drop that, will you?” he roared, bestowing a violent kick on one of his men who was blazing away without even bringing his piece to his shoulder. The fellow gave a yell of pain and made off.
At length the confusion began to abate. Seeing no further sign of an attack upon the camp, and their ammunition having decreased alarmingly, the native auxiliaries ceased firing by degrees, each man, as he did so, sneaking off looking very much ashamed of himself.
“Damned fools, in sooth,” assented Claverton, when the uproar had calmed down. “But, Lumley, I wish you’d just turn up that fellow Smith—Vargas Smith. There’s something I want to see him about at once.”
“Certainly. Here, pass the word there for Corporal Smith,” he called out.
“Oh, he’s promoted, then?”
“Well, yes. A sharp fellow, you know; helps me no end.”
But Corporal Smith was not forthcoming. He was nowhere to be found, in fact. He was not on guard, for he had been in the camp not long before the alarm, they said, but now there was no trace of him.
“How long before?”
Well, it might have been half an hour since he was seen, certainly not much more.
“Not less?”
No, not less. On that point they were all ready to swear.
“Even as I suspected,” thought Claverton to himself. And he waited some time longer talking to Lumley, and ironically bantering some of his former men for their contribution to the recent chaos.
“A set of smart fellows you are, eh, old Cobus?” he said, addressing one of the sergeants. “Blazing away all night at the stars and bushes.”
“Nay what, kaptyn,” rejoined the old Hottentot, shamefacedly. “You see a lot of us shooting like that must hit somebody. We shall find many of theschelmslying there in the morning.”
“Many of theschelms? Devil a bit. One or two of your own sentries, perhaps.”
“No—Kafirs, kaptyn.”
“Bah. There won’t be a leaf or a twig left on the bushes within a circle of two miles, perhaps, but if you find a single Kafir lying within it, I’ll engage to eat him.”
There was a roar of laughter, half deprecatory, half of intense amusement, from the group of listeners who had drawn near, at this sarcastic hit. But just then a diversion occurred in the shape of the reappearance of the missing Corporal Smith.
“Hallo, Smith; where the devil have you been?” cried Lumley.
“Been on guard, sir,” was the reply, in a tone which seemed to add, “and now shut up.”
“You weren’t told off.”
“I went because they said Gert Flinders was ill, and I took his place,” he said, with a touch of defiance.
Claverton, meanwhile, eyed him narrowly. Two impressions were present to his mind—one, the extremely loose state of discipline into which Lumley had let the corps drift; the other, which more nearly concerned himself, the evident anxiety of the Cuban mulatto to avoid further questioning. He noticed also, with one keen, swift glance, that that worthy wore a pair of new veldtschoens.
“By the way, on second thoughts it doesn’t matter to-night,” he said, carelessly. “To-morrow will do just as well, Smith. It’s late now, and it’s best to get things ship-shape after the row. Good-night, Lumley,” he added. “Come round and feed to-morrow night if we are still here,” and he went away.
By the time Claverton reached his tent all was quiet again. His companion had turned in, and was sleeping as unconcernedly as if beneath the roof of an English dwelling instead of having narrowly escaped being shot through the head by a nocturnal foe in the wilds of Kafirland. He hastened to turn in likewise, but not to sleep. Instinct led him to connect this last attempt upon his life with some evil hovering over himself and Lilian. For that he was the intended mark of the assassin’s bullet he had known the moment it was fired.
While it was yet dark Claverton left the camp quietly, and the first glimmer of dawn saw him narrowly searching for the spot whence the shot had been fired. It took him nearly an hour, but he found it at last. And he found something more: he found three distinct footmarks—the print of a pair of new veldtschoens—in the damp soil, for a heavy dew had fallen in the night; and furthermore, sticking among the thorns, the tiny fragment of a flannel shirt of peculiar pattern. And a vindictive light came into the blue-grey eyes as he walked straight back to camp, murmuring to himself complacently:
“Just so—just as I suspected! Mr Corporal Vargas Smith—aliasSharkey—you have chosen to throw away your life again, and now, if you are above ground in six weeks at the outside from to-day, may I be beneath it!”
For a moment the resolve seized him to have the ruffian arrested. There was abundant evidence to convict him before a drum-head court-martial, but then the heads of the field forces would inevitably shrink from administering the extreme penalty; and besides, the question of motive must arise, which would be an inconvenient thing to be ventilated in public just then. No; the safest and best plan would be to pay the assassin in his own coin; and, strong-headed and unscrupulous in such a case as this, Claverton doubted not his ability to discharge the debt with interest.
He reached his tent in time to find a trooper dismounting there. The man looked hot, dusty, and tired, having ridden express from Cathcart with letters and despatches for the camp. Saluting, he handed a telegram to Claverton and withdrew. The latter held the ominous missive for a moment, regarding it with a blank stare, then, with a jerk, tore it open, and, at the first glimpse of its purport, his face became ashy. This is what he saw:
FromPayne, Grahamstown.ToClaverton, Brathwaite’s Horse, Colonial Forces in Gaika Location, via Cathcart.Come at once, and at all risks. No cause for alarm, but come.
FromPayne, Grahamstown.
ToClaverton, Brathwaite’s Horse, Colonial Forces in Gaika Location, via Cathcart.
Come at once, and at all risks. No cause for alarm, but come.
He looked at the date. The message had been handed in two days before, and had been lying at Cathcart for lack of an opportunity of transport. The words swam before his eyes, and his blood ran cold with a chill fear. This brooding presentiment, then, had not come upon him for nothing. Handing his companion the telegram, he strode to the door and called for Sam.
“’Nkos?” and the native came running up with alacrity.
“Saddle-up Fleck and the young horse, Sam, and be ready to start in half an hour at the outside.”
“Yeh bo, ’Nkos,” replied Sam, too well accustomed to his master’s ways to be astonished at anything; and he retired to carry out his orders.
Quickly Claverton went over to arrange with Jim Brathwaite for his absence, and long before the appointed time he was ready to start. He fidgeted about, looking at his watch every moment; and lo, just three minutes short of the half-hour his retainer appeared with the two horses.
“My dear fellow, don’t give a thought to me,” said Naylor, warmly, in response to his explanations of this sudden departure. “I shall make myself comfortable while you are away, never fear. Now, don’t delay any longer. Your duty shall be looked after all right,” he added, and with a close hand grip he bade his friend farewell.
Claverton, with his trusty follower, sped on across the hostile ground, every yard of which might conceal a foe; but of this he took less than no heed. All his thoughts were ahead of him by the hundred and odd miles or so which he had to traverse. His plan was to change horses half-way, leaving Sam to follow at leisure, once they were well out of the localities where they might fall in with roving bands of the enemy; and to push on, even if he killed his steed in the undertaking. Away in the blue heavens clouds of vultures, the ubiquitous scavengers of Southern Africa, were visible, poised above the scene of the late conflict; and these grew fainter and fainter, till they were lost to view in the far distance, and the sun began to decline in the west as the travellers kept steadily on over hill and dale, carefully eschewing short cuts and keeping to the beaten track. Once they were descried by a group of Kafir scouts, who, from their position on a hill-top, opened fire at long range, and of course ineffectually.
“Sam,” exclaimed Claverton, as they were saddling up to continue their road, after a short halt, “there’s a devil of a storm coming up. Look there.”
The native glanced upwards. “There is, Inkos,” he replied; “but we may just ride through it and escape.”
Great inky clouds were gathering with alarming rapidity, and hastening to unite themselves to the dense black pall which drew on, silent, spectral, and gigantic, over the mountain-tops, and a dull, muffled roar boomed nearer and nearer between the fitful puffs of hot wind which fanned the travellers’ faces. And now the scene was a weird one indeed. They were just entering a long defile—for they had reached the mountains—and along the rugged crags of the lonely heights towering above on either side, the red flashes were playing. Higher and higher piled the solid cloud-masses, and a few large drops of rain began to patter upon the stones. The gloom deepened, and all Nature was hushed as if in preparation for the coming battle of the elements.
Hark! Was that the ring of a horse’s hoof far down the pass? No. Not a human creature is abroad in this awesome place to-night, with the black, brooding storm overhead, and the clans of the savage enemy besetting every step of the road with peril. A huge bird of prey soars away from one of the desolate crags, uttering a hoarse, long-drawn cry like the wailing of a lost soul. It is pitch dark. Then a flash lights up the road, and Claverton, profiting by it, peers anxiously ahead.
“Come along, Sam. There’s a smooth bit here, anyhow, and we can get over a good stride of ground,” and, spurring up his horse, away he goes at a long, even canter, with the Natal boy close behind him striving to keep up; and the sparks fly from beneath the horses’ hoofs as they dash on through the night. A roll of thunder—long, heavy, and appalling—peals through the pass, a vivid flash of plum-coloured flame, and Claverton suddenly reins in his steed—who, with a snort of terror, rears and shies—just in time to avoid charging headlong into another horseman advancing at an equally rapid pace from the contrary direction, and who also reins in with a jerk. A powerfully-built, dark-featured man who stifles a half-spoken ejaculation; but beyond that neither speak.
What is the spell thrown over these two as they sit their horses gazing at each other in the lightning’s horrible, scathing gleam in that gloomy pass? Is it an instinct? It is more. In that one vivid flash occupying not a second of time, Claverton has recognised in this sudden apparition the man whom he had seen and heard in the deserted hut, deliberately instigating his assassination. He recognises something more. As, with a muttered “good-night,” the other passes on into the gloom, the lightning flashes again, revealing upon his bridle-hand a curious ring. It is an exact facsimile of the lost ring which glittered in the moonbeams beneath the old pear-tree on that last night at Seringa Vale.
Volume Two—Chapter Seventeen.“Give us Long Rest... Dare Death or Dreamful Ease.”We left Lilian crushed beneath the weight of this fresh blow dealt her by the man who had been the curse of her life.To a night of anguish—anguish so poignant that she sometimes feared for her very reason—succeeded days of dull and hopeless apathy. Her whole being, body and soul alike, seemed to be numb and dead. She could not talk, she dared not think, nor could she pray. Even that last resource was denied her; for there came upon her a miserable feeling of fatality, that her God had forsaken her, leaving her to be the sport of some cruel demon. And, amid her apathy, her thoughts would, in spite of herself, float dreamily back in a mechanical kind of way to all that had gone before. She had been sad-hearted then in the temporary separation from her lover; but now! that time was ecstasy itself in comparison with this. Somehow, it never occurred to her to doubt one word of Truscott’s statement. He had been so positive, so resolute, that it must be true. And then she remembered the hundred and one little incidents—hints that her lover had let fall—uneasiness manifested on an occasion—the veiled compunction with which he had touched upon his former life—all stood out now in startling conspicuousness. Even that day had opened so propitiously, and lo, within one single hour, life was ended for her.Sorely anxious were the Paynes over this fell change which had come upon her on that sunny afternoon. They could elicit nothing from her. She was not well, she admitted, but would be all right in a day or two, no doubt. And this, with such a ghost of a smile upon her white face, that Payne, suddenly struck with an idea, snatched up his hat and rushed down into the town to inquire if any fresh news had been received from the seat of war. Had she, unknown to them, heard that harm had befallen her lover? If so, that would amply account for the depression. So he went diligently to work to hunt up news; but no telegrams of a dispiriting nature had been received, quite the contrary—the enemy had had another thrashing, and there was no mention of loss on the colonial side. All this was a relief to Payne. But sorely puzzled; indeed, completely baffled; he returned to his wife and reported accordingly.“I tell you what, George,” she began, and her face wore a troubled and concerned expression. “I’ve heard something—something that makes me think this Captain Truscott’s at the bottom of it.”“Eh?”“Well, he was here yesterday afternoon for more than two hours, and Lilian hasn’t been herself since. She didn’t tell me, but I heard it while you were out.”Payne stared at her blankly, but made no reply.“You know I never did like that man,” continued she. “I told you so at first. And I’m perfectly certain that he and Lilian are something more than merely old acquaintances.” And then she told him of the latter’s dismayed look on first recognising Truscott in the crowd, and one or two other things that had not escaped her observation. “He has been persecuting her in some way, I’m sure, and I won’t have her persecuted,” concluded the warm-hearted little woman.Payne was whistling meditatively. He had a high opinion of his wife’s intelligence in all matters relating to the idiosyncrasies of her sex, so he would just let her go on.“Well, what’s to be done?” he said. “We can’t ask the fellow what the devil he’s been up to, and Lilian won’t tell us.”“Can’t we? I think we can, and ought.”Payne shook his head, and looked gloomy. The affair was beginning to assume a serious phase. It was a delicate business, and the honest frontiersman felt thoroughly perplexed. He did not want to make a fool of himself, or of any one else, through officiousness or meddling.“I know a trick worth two of that, Annie,” he said at last.“What is it?”“Wire to Claverton. Eh?”She paused. “Well, perhaps that would be the best plan.”“Good. I’ll cut down and do it now.” And, sliding from the table whereon he had been seated swinging his legs, he reached down a jar of tobacco from a shelf, and hastily cramming his pipe, started off. “What shall I tell him, though?” he asked, suddenly stopping in the doorway. “Won’t do to pitch it too strong, eh?”“N-no. Wait a bit,” and then she concocted the message which we have seen Claverton receive; and Payne being on his way to despatch it, she turned away with a look of relief over the prospect of decreasing responsibility.Lilian, meanwhile, had become a mere shadow of her old self, and the one spark of comfort left to her was that her persecutor had kept himself out of her sight. For he had left the city, bound for the seat of war, and, for reasons of his own, he had refrained from bidding farewell to the Paynes in person, but had sent a note explaining that he was ordered off at a minute’s warning. He had got a command at last, he said; only some levies, at present, but still that was something to go on with, and he must leave for the front immediately. Which missive was read by its recipients with feelings of decided relief.The fact was, the gallant Truscott began to suspect that it might be advisable for him to take himself out of the way for a time, and he had no desire to meet his rival in person. Let the two settle it as best they might, was his cynical reflection; settle it they must, and to his, Truscott’s, satisfaction—on that point he felt perfectly safe. He had played a bold game and had won, and, now that he had won, it would never do to spoil it by any chance blundering. So with a few lines of renewed warning, merciless, pithy, and to the point, posted to Lilian—the wily scoundrel departed for the seat of war, and unless a well-aimed bullet should pierce the black, scheming heart, and of that there was but small chance, there would be no more happiness for her on earth. There were times when she would almost make up her mind to throw off the hateful thrall, to defy him to do his worst, whatever that worst might be; but then would rise up the frightful facts, as he had laid them before her in all their nakedness, and she would fall asleep, only to be haunted by a series of terrible dreams; visions of a crowded court hushened to a deathly silence in expectation of the dread sentence; of a small group in a grim gaol-yard, in the chill morning—one face among them lit up with fiendish exaltation—a noose, a gallows, and a black, hideous beam.“My love—my sweet lost love!” she would moan, waking from one of these frightful fantasies in a flood of streaming tears. “Was it for this you were restored to me again? Ah, why did we ever meet?” And the black, silent hours melted away into dawn, but brought with them no comfort. More than once had her affectionate hostess tried to get at the secret of her grief—but Lilian was firm. Meanwhile, the Paynes began to grow seriously alarmed. A very little more of this, and the results would be disastrous. Nothing had been heard of the telegram, and they became more and more anxious every day.“Miss Strange, do let’s go for a walk when I come back; it’ll be such a lovely evening.” The speaker was Rose Payne, who was hurriedly gathering up her books, and cramming them into a bag, preparatory to starting for afternoon school.“So we will, dear. Only you must come back in good time.”“Won’t I?” gleefully cried the little girl, flinging her arms round Lilian’s neck. She was rapturously fond of her former preceptress, all the more so, perhaps, now that she was subjected to the sterner discipline of school; and a long, quiet evening walk with Lilian, all to herself, was a treat indeed. “Won’t I just come straight back! It’ll be nice and cool then, and we can go ever so far over the hill, above Fern Kloof. So long, till four.”“Good-bye, Rosie dear,” replied Lilian, kissing the child affectionately, and, with a sigh, watching her bound light-heartedly away. Then she turned from the doorway, and, with a drooping gesture of abandonment, threw herself into a low chair. The Paynes were out somewhere, and, as on that former afternoon, she had the house entirely to herself. The soft air came in through the open windows, warm but not oppressive, from the tree-fringed shade. A great striped butterfly floated in, and, scarcely aware of its mistake, fluttered around a large vase of flowers upon the table. And still she sat, heedless of everything, with her hands pressed to her face, thinking, thinking—ever thinking.“Only four days ago,” she said to herself, “four short days—and now! Ah, God, it is too cruel!” and the tears welled forth and slowly began to force their way through the closed fingers.The hum of the voices of a couple of passers-by sound drowsily upon the calm; then, the ring of hoofs coming up the street at a rapid canter. It stops, as if some one had reined in before the door—but she heeds it not. Some one dismounting at the next house, she thinks. Then a quick, firm tread in the passage, and a man is standing inside the room. With a low, startled cry, Lilian looks up and falls back in her chair in a deathly faint. It is Claverton.In a moment he is beside her, and has her in his arms. “Oh, Lilian, my darling! Whatisthis? They did right to send for me—Good God, Lilian! Why, what have you been doing with yourself to get like this?” he adds, in a tone of undisguised alarm, startled by her white and dejected looks.But no reply can she make. Fairly taken by storm, she is clinging tightly to him, her face buried in his breast. Only a convulsive sob shakes her frame from head to foot.“What have you been doing with yourself, child?” he continues, vehemently. “Why, you are as white and pale as the mere ghost of your former self. Lilian!” but still she cannot answer. “Lilian; look at me, I say. I have ridden straight here, day and night as hard as I could ride, to come to you and never to leave you again.”He paused; but the expected words of joy and of love came not. Suddenly she drew herself away from him, and the look on her face was as the look of death. Already she had failed to keep her side of the compact—that compact written in tears, and sealed with the throes of a breaking heart—and she had doomed him. No, but she would not.“Arthur, you must leave me. Now, at once, before it is too late,” she exclaimed, in a quick, alarmed tone.“Lilian. Are you mad?”Not a shade of anger or reproach is there in his voice. Amazement and indulgent tenderness alone are to be traced.And she? Frantic with apprehension, she knew not what to say. To warn him of danger would be but to drive him right into its jaws. What should she do? Ah! That was it. The old promise.“Lilian, what has come between us, now? Only tell me, darling, and it will all be cleared away.”It was terrible. Her brain reeled as, with wild, dilated eyes, she stood gazing at him. His presence was so unexpected—it had burst upon her like a thunderbolt. He had, as he said, travelled night and day to reach her side—and now she must bid him leave her for ever though it broke her heart, as it certainly would. They two must never look upon each other again in life. Then her brain grew cold and steady. She must not flinch, she must save him from this ruthless enemy at all and whatever cost to herself. To herself! Ah, but—and to him? The answer to this question flashed across her determination—the consciousness of how valueless would be the life she was about to save. Yet—O God! the recollection of those terrible, menacing words! She sank her head into her clasped hands and shuddered. Again, so softly, so tenderly, he repeated his question:“Lilian; what has come between us? Tell me, darling!”She threw back her head with a quick movement, as if quivering beneath the torture.“My former promise, Arthur. You remember,” and averting her face, again she shuddered from head to foot. “He is not—dead—as I thought.”“And then—?”“I cannot break it. I thought him dead—but now—I cannot break it. God help me!—help us both!”A devil took possession of Claverton’s heart, and the fixed, vengeful look in his face was awful to behold as he murmured to himself: “God helphim. If he is not dead he soon will be—or I.” Then aloud: “Lilian, you vowed once that nothing ever should part us. You remember, darling.”The voice was even more gentle than before. Had it been otherwise she could almost better have borne it—and yet not. A fraction of a second and she had yielded, had thrown herself into his arms; but again the savage threats of Truscott and the diabolical malice of his tones and looks rose up before her, and she felt strong again. In a paroxysm of that love, which was at once her strength and her weakness, she cried:“I cannot—I cannot, Arthur. I am too weak, and that you must see. I cannot break that promise. You must go—go and curse my name and memory—if it be worth cursing, to the end of your days. And I—O God! let me die!”The forced, unnatural hardness which she had thrown into her voice, struck upon his ear, filling him with amazement and dismay. It was all like a bad dream. He could hardly realise that she was actually trying to cast him off. From any other living soul guilty of such vacillating treachery, he would have turned away in scarcely surprised scorn. To this woman, rather than speak one word of anger, reproach, or blame—and what is harder—rather than think it, he would have died a thousand deaths. How he loved her! Her very weakness was sacred to him. It was thrown upon his tenderness, now; it was for him to handle it tenderly, not to crush it—and her. And a curious thrill of ghastly comfort shot through him in the thought that even at this fearful moment, when his heart was sick with bitter despair, he was really proving the strength of his love by something more than words. Three times now had she repulsed him, each under circumstances more cruel than the previous one—but the loyal love of the man never flinched—never swerved by a single hair’s breadth. And he must be very gentle and indulgent with her now.“Lilian, my sweet, you hardly know what you are saying,” he answered, imprinting a shower of passionate kisses on the trembling, ashy lips. “I’m not going to take what you tell me, in earnest at all.”“Spare me—spare me,” she moaned, shuddering in his embrace. “I meant it—all, and—”“Hi—Halloa! Here’s some fellow’s horse got into the garden!” cried a man’s voice outside. “Yek—yek! Hi! Jafta. Turn the infernal brute out. He’s broken down the fence in two places—confound it—which means a claim for five pounds from old Cooke next door. Out, you brute!” and a sound was heard of a stone, launched by an incensed hand, striking violently against the paling, while the offending quadruped, tearing his way through and carrying with him two yards of fence, bolted off, snorting and kicking, down the road.“What’ll the owner do, George?” said another voice approaching the front door. “Goodness knows where that horse’ll bolt to, now.”“Blazes, I hope—and his owner after him,” replied Payne, surveying resentfully the receding form of the trespasser. “Why the deuce can’t fellows tie their horses up when they leave ’em in the streets? O Lord!”This last ejaculation was caused by the sight of Claverton, who had come quickly to the door to meet them and to give Lilian time to recover herself, and at whom the speaker stood staring open-mouthed and somewhat dismayed.“Was thatyourhorse, old chap?” he asked, dubiously, shaking hands with the new arrival and experiencing a sensation of huge relief because of his presence.“It was; but it may be the possession of some one else by now. Bother the horse, though. I say, Payne, I want to talk to you.”“One minute, old chap. Here, Jafta—Jafta,” he called out to his boy. “Go and catch that horse again. Look sharp—run like the devil. If you bring him back within a quarter of an hour I’ll give you a shilling.”Away went Jafta, and Payne, glad of the momentary delay, returned to Claverton sorely perplexed. He had sent for him, indeed, but didn’t know what the deuce to say to him now that he had come. It was more within a woman’s province, he thought; and there and then his spouse came to the rescue, taking the affair into her own hands.“Come inside, Mr Claverton,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re here.” And then, when they were alone, she told him everything that had happened, from the day they had first seen Truscott until the moment of their going out that afternoon just before his arrival.He listened quietly. A deadly resolve was shaping itself within his heart.“What sort of a man is this Truscott—I mean what sort of a looking man?” he asked.She described him, and the listener immediately recognised the portrait. The whole scheme was clear to him now. There was no question of money at the bottom of this man’s hostility towards him. Either the mulatto was lying when he had told him this, or, more probably, the other had given such a reason in order to conceal the real one. No. It was to rob him of Lilian that his would-be assassin was plotting. He was wise, indeed, to hire the bravo’s steel in the shape of Sharkey—for he might have been sure that only death would part him from Lilian. Ralph Truscott, look to yourself now. It is no woman, weak in the very helplessness of her love, with whom you have to deal this time. You have, indeed, cause to meditate.“He’s gone to the front, has he?” continued Claverton. “Whereabouts? Do you know?”Annie Payne looked at him with a troubled air. She knew well her interlocutor’s determination and daring, and she saw breakers ahead.“But it will be all right now that you are back again,” she ventured. She greatly feared otherwise; still, one must hope for the best.The dark look deepened over his features. He hardly seemed to hear her, but stood gazing through the open window.“I must go,” he exclaimed, suddenly. “Where is Lilian?” and with three strides he gained the other room. It was empty. “Ah, better so, perhaps,” he muttered to himself. “Mrs Payne, tell her, with my love, that a very few days will see me back here again, and everything will come right then. Now I must not lose another moment. Good-bye, for a few days.”“What are you going to do?” was the reply, spoken in a tone of alarm. “Wait. Don’t be in such a hurry. You can’t rush off at once. You must off-saddle if only for an hour. Anyhow, wait until George comes back. Ah, there he is.”For at that moment George appeared, leading the runaway by the bridle. The joint exertions of himself and his stable-boy had availed to catch the trespasser just in time to prevent his doing further damage.Claverton was firm in his refusal. He had his own reasons for wishing to leave that house. Not even the smallest risk would he run of being tempted to forego the purpose he had in hand, for a single instant.“Here’s your critter, old chap,” cried Payne, panting from the effects of his ran. “Je—rusalem! What a chevvy we had after the beggar—Eh? What? Going away! Not to be thought of.”“But I am!” replied the other in a tone of settled resolve, as he prepared to fling the bridle over the animal’s neck. “Shall be back again in four or five days. Hold on. Just walk a little way down the street with me.”They walked on. Payne’s brow growing more and more serious as he listened. He had a great regard for this man, who had stepped in to his rescue twice at a very critical moment.“My dear Claverton, be careful what you are about,” he said, gravely. “It’s a devilish awkward business, and at any other time than during the war it would be impossible.”“Oh, I’ve served my apprenticeship in a good school for caution, never fear. But, you’ll see me again in a few days or—you’ll never see me at all.”Payne made no reply. Suddenly he looked up at a house they were passing. It was a small house standing back from the street.“By the way. We were awfully sorry to hear about that poor fellow Armitage,” he said. “His wife is staying there.”“Staying there? In that house? Why, I thought she was in ‘King.’”“No. She came down here about a week ago—she only heard about the poor fellow the day before yesterday.”“Is she very much cut up?”“Dreadfully, I’m told. She is staying with another friend of yours—Mrs Hicks.”“Then she’s in good hands. Look here, Payne. I’ll go in for a moment and ask after her—poor little thing. And if I’m not out in five minutes, just take my horse round to Wood’s and make them off-saddle him and give him a feed. It’s all on my way and it’ll save time. I’ll join you there, if you don’t mind waiting.”Quickly walking up the little gravel path bordered with orange-trees, and shaded with trellised vines, Claverton knocked gently at the door. A subdued footstep in the silent passage, and it was opened—by Laura. She stared at him in amazement.“Why, when did you come? I thought you were away at the front. Do come in.” A superfluous request, seeing that she had already shut the door behind him. “Poor Gertie will like to see you.”“How does she bear it?”“She is dreadfully down-hearted. At first I was quite alarmed for her, but I think the worst is over now. She was very fond of poor Jack.”“So were we all. Even such a leather-hearted curmudgeon as your humble servant.”“It is no fault of yours that the poor fellow is not alive at this moment,” rejoined Laura, with warmth. “We heard all about it.” All this time she had been furtively watching him, and noting, with some astonishment, his listless and dejected air. It was owing to no regret for his deceased comrade, she was certain of that. What could be going wrong with him?“My dear Laura, I give you my word for it there was nothing to hear,” he replied; and seeing that the subject was distasteful to him, she left him, to go and prepare poor Gertie for his visit.Claverton wished he could have forgotten his own trouble as he stood in the presence of the young widow—this mere girl—sorrowing for the loss of him with whom she had begun to tread life’s path. Very happy and bright had that path been to her—to them both—during those short two years. Very happy and peaceful would it have continued to be; but now he was gone—snatched away from her suddenly by the merciless bullet of the savage foe—shot down in the dark forest. He lay, cold in his grave, far away in the wilds of Kafirland; and his gleeful laugh, and sunny glance, would gladden her heart and her eyes no more. No wonder a rush of tears came to her eyes, as she remembered under what circumstances she had last seen her visitor. And now she was desolate and alone.Claverton held her hand in his strong, friendly grasp, and, when the first paroxysm of her reopened grief was spent, gently he narrated the circumstances of poor Armitage’s last moments; how his last thoughts and care had been for her; how her name had been almost the last words upon his lips. Then he dwelt upon the dead man’s popularity, and the blank his loss would leave in the ranks of his comrades, not one of whom but would have risked life to save him had they known before it was too late. And there was that in the gentle, sympathetic voice, which soothed and comforted the girl-widow, sorrowing there as one who had no hope.“My bright-hearted Jack! I shall never see you again. Would that I had been more loving to you while you were here,” she murmured, and, bowing her head into her hands, again she wept.“That I am sure you could not have been,” answered Claverton, gently, placing his hand upon her shoulder, and looking down on her with infinite pity. “Child, believe me, there are losses more bitter even than those inflicted upon as by death. Now, I must go. Good-bye—I am returning to camp now; but I shall come and see you again soon, and you must try and keep up your spirits.”She seized his hand. “You risked your life to save his. No—it’s of no use denying it—you did. God bless you for it, and those who were with you. Tell them from me, when you go back, that I thank them. Good-bye. God bless you—and Lilian.”This was too much. The chord of his own grief thus suddenly touched, vibrated loudly. With a silent pressure of the hand, he left her.“Any message for Hicks?” he asked, as Laura met him in the passage.“What! Why, you are never going back to the front already?” answered she, gazing at him in astonishment.“I am—straight. In an hour’s time I shall be at least eight or nine miles on the road.”She saw that he meant it, and her woman’s wit saw at once that something was wrong.“I am very sorry,” she said. “Do wait ten minutes while I write a line to Alfred. He will like to get it direct, and the post is such a chance.”A superstitious foreboding took hold of Claverton’s mind as he watched her bending over her writing-case at the other side of the room. This miserable war had made one widow immediately within their own circle, Heaven grant that it might not make two. It seemed that nothing but ill-luck had befallen that once happy circle since he had joined it—as if his presence had something baleful about it, and was destined to work harm to all with whom he came in contact. Ah, well, he had one more mission to fulfil, and then what became of him did not much matter. So Laura having finished her letter he bade her farewell, promising to deliver it as soon as he reached the camp.“I tell you what it is, Claverton. You’ll have to ride that animal rather carefully, or he’ll never carry you all the way,” remarked Payne, eyeing the horse critically as his rider, having hastily buckled the last strap, swung himself into the saddle.“No, I’ve ridden his tail nearly off as it is. But I shall meet Sam on the road, and shall change. Good-bye, or rather, so long. You’ll see me again in about a week—barring accidents.”Payne’s heart sank within him. There wae a reckless, determined ring in the other’s tone that meant volumes; and he shook his head sadly as he watched him ride away down the street. Then he walked slowly home, lost in thought.
We left Lilian crushed beneath the weight of this fresh blow dealt her by the man who had been the curse of her life.
To a night of anguish—anguish so poignant that she sometimes feared for her very reason—succeeded days of dull and hopeless apathy. Her whole being, body and soul alike, seemed to be numb and dead. She could not talk, she dared not think, nor could she pray. Even that last resource was denied her; for there came upon her a miserable feeling of fatality, that her God had forsaken her, leaving her to be the sport of some cruel demon. And, amid her apathy, her thoughts would, in spite of herself, float dreamily back in a mechanical kind of way to all that had gone before. She had been sad-hearted then in the temporary separation from her lover; but now! that time was ecstasy itself in comparison with this. Somehow, it never occurred to her to doubt one word of Truscott’s statement. He had been so positive, so resolute, that it must be true. And then she remembered the hundred and one little incidents—hints that her lover had let fall—uneasiness manifested on an occasion—the veiled compunction with which he had touched upon his former life—all stood out now in startling conspicuousness. Even that day had opened so propitiously, and lo, within one single hour, life was ended for her.
Sorely anxious were the Paynes over this fell change which had come upon her on that sunny afternoon. They could elicit nothing from her. She was not well, she admitted, but would be all right in a day or two, no doubt. And this, with such a ghost of a smile upon her white face, that Payne, suddenly struck with an idea, snatched up his hat and rushed down into the town to inquire if any fresh news had been received from the seat of war. Had she, unknown to them, heard that harm had befallen her lover? If so, that would amply account for the depression. So he went diligently to work to hunt up news; but no telegrams of a dispiriting nature had been received, quite the contrary—the enemy had had another thrashing, and there was no mention of loss on the colonial side. All this was a relief to Payne. But sorely puzzled; indeed, completely baffled; he returned to his wife and reported accordingly.
“I tell you what, George,” she began, and her face wore a troubled and concerned expression. “I’ve heard something—something that makes me think this Captain Truscott’s at the bottom of it.”
“Eh?”
“Well, he was here yesterday afternoon for more than two hours, and Lilian hasn’t been herself since. She didn’t tell me, but I heard it while you were out.”
Payne stared at her blankly, but made no reply.
“You know I never did like that man,” continued she. “I told you so at first. And I’m perfectly certain that he and Lilian are something more than merely old acquaintances.” And then she told him of the latter’s dismayed look on first recognising Truscott in the crowd, and one or two other things that had not escaped her observation. “He has been persecuting her in some way, I’m sure, and I won’t have her persecuted,” concluded the warm-hearted little woman.
Payne was whistling meditatively. He had a high opinion of his wife’s intelligence in all matters relating to the idiosyncrasies of her sex, so he would just let her go on.
“Well, what’s to be done?” he said. “We can’t ask the fellow what the devil he’s been up to, and Lilian won’t tell us.”
“Can’t we? I think we can, and ought.”
Payne shook his head, and looked gloomy. The affair was beginning to assume a serious phase. It was a delicate business, and the honest frontiersman felt thoroughly perplexed. He did not want to make a fool of himself, or of any one else, through officiousness or meddling.
“I know a trick worth two of that, Annie,” he said at last.
“What is it?”
“Wire to Claverton. Eh?”
She paused. “Well, perhaps that would be the best plan.”
“Good. I’ll cut down and do it now.” And, sliding from the table whereon he had been seated swinging his legs, he reached down a jar of tobacco from a shelf, and hastily cramming his pipe, started off. “What shall I tell him, though?” he asked, suddenly stopping in the doorway. “Won’t do to pitch it too strong, eh?”
“N-no. Wait a bit,” and then she concocted the message which we have seen Claverton receive; and Payne being on his way to despatch it, she turned away with a look of relief over the prospect of decreasing responsibility.
Lilian, meanwhile, had become a mere shadow of her old self, and the one spark of comfort left to her was that her persecutor had kept himself out of her sight. For he had left the city, bound for the seat of war, and, for reasons of his own, he had refrained from bidding farewell to the Paynes in person, but had sent a note explaining that he was ordered off at a minute’s warning. He had got a command at last, he said; only some levies, at present, but still that was something to go on with, and he must leave for the front immediately. Which missive was read by its recipients with feelings of decided relief.
The fact was, the gallant Truscott began to suspect that it might be advisable for him to take himself out of the way for a time, and he had no desire to meet his rival in person. Let the two settle it as best they might, was his cynical reflection; settle it they must, and to his, Truscott’s, satisfaction—on that point he felt perfectly safe. He had played a bold game and had won, and, now that he had won, it would never do to spoil it by any chance blundering. So with a few lines of renewed warning, merciless, pithy, and to the point, posted to Lilian—the wily scoundrel departed for the seat of war, and unless a well-aimed bullet should pierce the black, scheming heart, and of that there was but small chance, there would be no more happiness for her on earth. There were times when she would almost make up her mind to throw off the hateful thrall, to defy him to do his worst, whatever that worst might be; but then would rise up the frightful facts, as he had laid them before her in all their nakedness, and she would fall asleep, only to be haunted by a series of terrible dreams; visions of a crowded court hushened to a deathly silence in expectation of the dread sentence; of a small group in a grim gaol-yard, in the chill morning—one face among them lit up with fiendish exaltation—a noose, a gallows, and a black, hideous beam.
“My love—my sweet lost love!” she would moan, waking from one of these frightful fantasies in a flood of streaming tears. “Was it for this you were restored to me again? Ah, why did we ever meet?” And the black, silent hours melted away into dawn, but brought with them no comfort. More than once had her affectionate hostess tried to get at the secret of her grief—but Lilian was firm. Meanwhile, the Paynes began to grow seriously alarmed. A very little more of this, and the results would be disastrous. Nothing had been heard of the telegram, and they became more and more anxious every day.
“Miss Strange, do let’s go for a walk when I come back; it’ll be such a lovely evening.” The speaker was Rose Payne, who was hurriedly gathering up her books, and cramming them into a bag, preparatory to starting for afternoon school.
“So we will, dear. Only you must come back in good time.”
“Won’t I?” gleefully cried the little girl, flinging her arms round Lilian’s neck. She was rapturously fond of her former preceptress, all the more so, perhaps, now that she was subjected to the sterner discipline of school; and a long, quiet evening walk with Lilian, all to herself, was a treat indeed. “Won’t I just come straight back! It’ll be nice and cool then, and we can go ever so far over the hill, above Fern Kloof. So long, till four.”
“Good-bye, Rosie dear,” replied Lilian, kissing the child affectionately, and, with a sigh, watching her bound light-heartedly away. Then she turned from the doorway, and, with a drooping gesture of abandonment, threw herself into a low chair. The Paynes were out somewhere, and, as on that former afternoon, she had the house entirely to herself. The soft air came in through the open windows, warm but not oppressive, from the tree-fringed shade. A great striped butterfly floated in, and, scarcely aware of its mistake, fluttered around a large vase of flowers upon the table. And still she sat, heedless of everything, with her hands pressed to her face, thinking, thinking—ever thinking.
“Only four days ago,” she said to herself, “four short days—and now! Ah, God, it is too cruel!” and the tears welled forth and slowly began to force their way through the closed fingers.
The hum of the voices of a couple of passers-by sound drowsily upon the calm; then, the ring of hoofs coming up the street at a rapid canter. It stops, as if some one had reined in before the door—but she heeds it not. Some one dismounting at the next house, she thinks. Then a quick, firm tread in the passage, and a man is standing inside the room. With a low, startled cry, Lilian looks up and falls back in her chair in a deathly faint. It is Claverton.
In a moment he is beside her, and has her in his arms. “Oh, Lilian, my darling! Whatisthis? They did right to send for me—Good God, Lilian! Why, what have you been doing with yourself to get like this?” he adds, in a tone of undisguised alarm, startled by her white and dejected looks.
But no reply can she make. Fairly taken by storm, she is clinging tightly to him, her face buried in his breast. Only a convulsive sob shakes her frame from head to foot.
“What have you been doing with yourself, child?” he continues, vehemently. “Why, you are as white and pale as the mere ghost of your former self. Lilian!” but still she cannot answer. “Lilian; look at me, I say. I have ridden straight here, day and night as hard as I could ride, to come to you and never to leave you again.”
He paused; but the expected words of joy and of love came not. Suddenly she drew herself away from him, and the look on her face was as the look of death. Already she had failed to keep her side of the compact—that compact written in tears, and sealed with the throes of a breaking heart—and she had doomed him. No, but she would not.
“Arthur, you must leave me. Now, at once, before it is too late,” she exclaimed, in a quick, alarmed tone.
“Lilian. Are you mad?”
Not a shade of anger or reproach is there in his voice. Amazement and indulgent tenderness alone are to be traced.
And she? Frantic with apprehension, she knew not what to say. To warn him of danger would be but to drive him right into its jaws. What should she do? Ah! That was it. The old promise.
“Lilian, what has come between us, now? Only tell me, darling, and it will all be cleared away.”
It was terrible. Her brain reeled as, with wild, dilated eyes, she stood gazing at him. His presence was so unexpected—it had burst upon her like a thunderbolt. He had, as he said, travelled night and day to reach her side—and now she must bid him leave her for ever though it broke her heart, as it certainly would. They two must never look upon each other again in life. Then her brain grew cold and steady. She must not flinch, she must save him from this ruthless enemy at all and whatever cost to herself. To herself! Ah, but—and to him? The answer to this question flashed across her determination—the consciousness of how valueless would be the life she was about to save. Yet—O God! the recollection of those terrible, menacing words! She sank her head into her clasped hands and shuddered. Again, so softly, so tenderly, he repeated his question:
“Lilian; what has come between us? Tell me, darling!”
She threw back her head with a quick movement, as if quivering beneath the torture.
“My former promise, Arthur. You remember,” and averting her face, again she shuddered from head to foot. “He is not—dead—as I thought.”
“And then—?”
“I cannot break it. I thought him dead—but now—I cannot break it. God help me!—help us both!”
A devil took possession of Claverton’s heart, and the fixed, vengeful look in his face was awful to behold as he murmured to himself: “God helphim. If he is not dead he soon will be—or I.” Then aloud: “Lilian, you vowed once that nothing ever should part us. You remember, darling.”
The voice was even more gentle than before. Had it been otherwise she could almost better have borne it—and yet not. A fraction of a second and she had yielded, had thrown herself into his arms; but again the savage threats of Truscott and the diabolical malice of his tones and looks rose up before her, and she felt strong again. In a paroxysm of that love, which was at once her strength and her weakness, she cried:
“I cannot—I cannot, Arthur. I am too weak, and that you must see. I cannot break that promise. You must go—go and curse my name and memory—if it be worth cursing, to the end of your days. And I—O God! let me die!”
The forced, unnatural hardness which she had thrown into her voice, struck upon his ear, filling him with amazement and dismay. It was all like a bad dream. He could hardly realise that she was actually trying to cast him off. From any other living soul guilty of such vacillating treachery, he would have turned away in scarcely surprised scorn. To this woman, rather than speak one word of anger, reproach, or blame—and what is harder—rather than think it, he would have died a thousand deaths. How he loved her! Her very weakness was sacred to him. It was thrown upon his tenderness, now; it was for him to handle it tenderly, not to crush it—and her. And a curious thrill of ghastly comfort shot through him in the thought that even at this fearful moment, when his heart was sick with bitter despair, he was really proving the strength of his love by something more than words. Three times now had she repulsed him, each under circumstances more cruel than the previous one—but the loyal love of the man never flinched—never swerved by a single hair’s breadth. And he must be very gentle and indulgent with her now.
“Lilian, my sweet, you hardly know what you are saying,” he answered, imprinting a shower of passionate kisses on the trembling, ashy lips. “I’m not going to take what you tell me, in earnest at all.”
“Spare me—spare me,” she moaned, shuddering in his embrace. “I meant it—all, and—”
“Hi—Halloa! Here’s some fellow’s horse got into the garden!” cried a man’s voice outside. “Yek—yek! Hi! Jafta. Turn the infernal brute out. He’s broken down the fence in two places—confound it—which means a claim for five pounds from old Cooke next door. Out, you brute!” and a sound was heard of a stone, launched by an incensed hand, striking violently against the paling, while the offending quadruped, tearing his way through and carrying with him two yards of fence, bolted off, snorting and kicking, down the road.
“What’ll the owner do, George?” said another voice approaching the front door. “Goodness knows where that horse’ll bolt to, now.”
“Blazes, I hope—and his owner after him,” replied Payne, surveying resentfully the receding form of the trespasser. “Why the deuce can’t fellows tie their horses up when they leave ’em in the streets? O Lord!”
This last ejaculation was caused by the sight of Claverton, who had come quickly to the door to meet them and to give Lilian time to recover herself, and at whom the speaker stood staring open-mouthed and somewhat dismayed.
“Was thatyourhorse, old chap?” he asked, dubiously, shaking hands with the new arrival and experiencing a sensation of huge relief because of his presence.
“It was; but it may be the possession of some one else by now. Bother the horse, though. I say, Payne, I want to talk to you.”
“One minute, old chap. Here, Jafta—Jafta,” he called out to his boy. “Go and catch that horse again. Look sharp—run like the devil. If you bring him back within a quarter of an hour I’ll give you a shilling.”
Away went Jafta, and Payne, glad of the momentary delay, returned to Claverton sorely perplexed. He had sent for him, indeed, but didn’t know what the deuce to say to him now that he had come. It was more within a woman’s province, he thought; and there and then his spouse came to the rescue, taking the affair into her own hands.
“Come inside, Mr Claverton,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re here.” And then, when they were alone, she told him everything that had happened, from the day they had first seen Truscott until the moment of their going out that afternoon just before his arrival.
He listened quietly. A deadly resolve was shaping itself within his heart.
“What sort of a man is this Truscott—I mean what sort of a looking man?” he asked.
She described him, and the listener immediately recognised the portrait. The whole scheme was clear to him now. There was no question of money at the bottom of this man’s hostility towards him. Either the mulatto was lying when he had told him this, or, more probably, the other had given such a reason in order to conceal the real one. No. It was to rob him of Lilian that his would-be assassin was plotting. He was wise, indeed, to hire the bravo’s steel in the shape of Sharkey—for he might have been sure that only death would part him from Lilian. Ralph Truscott, look to yourself now. It is no woman, weak in the very helplessness of her love, with whom you have to deal this time. You have, indeed, cause to meditate.
“He’s gone to the front, has he?” continued Claverton. “Whereabouts? Do you know?”
Annie Payne looked at him with a troubled air. She knew well her interlocutor’s determination and daring, and she saw breakers ahead.
“But it will be all right now that you are back again,” she ventured. She greatly feared otherwise; still, one must hope for the best.
The dark look deepened over his features. He hardly seemed to hear her, but stood gazing through the open window.
“I must go,” he exclaimed, suddenly. “Where is Lilian?” and with three strides he gained the other room. It was empty. “Ah, better so, perhaps,” he muttered to himself. “Mrs Payne, tell her, with my love, that a very few days will see me back here again, and everything will come right then. Now I must not lose another moment. Good-bye, for a few days.”
“What are you going to do?” was the reply, spoken in a tone of alarm. “Wait. Don’t be in such a hurry. You can’t rush off at once. You must off-saddle if only for an hour. Anyhow, wait until George comes back. Ah, there he is.”
For at that moment George appeared, leading the runaway by the bridle. The joint exertions of himself and his stable-boy had availed to catch the trespasser just in time to prevent his doing further damage.
Claverton was firm in his refusal. He had his own reasons for wishing to leave that house. Not even the smallest risk would he run of being tempted to forego the purpose he had in hand, for a single instant.
“Here’s your critter, old chap,” cried Payne, panting from the effects of his ran. “Je—rusalem! What a chevvy we had after the beggar—Eh? What? Going away! Not to be thought of.”
“But I am!” replied the other in a tone of settled resolve, as he prepared to fling the bridle over the animal’s neck. “Shall be back again in four or five days. Hold on. Just walk a little way down the street with me.”
They walked on. Payne’s brow growing more and more serious as he listened. He had a great regard for this man, who had stepped in to his rescue twice at a very critical moment.
“My dear Claverton, be careful what you are about,” he said, gravely. “It’s a devilish awkward business, and at any other time than during the war it would be impossible.”
“Oh, I’ve served my apprenticeship in a good school for caution, never fear. But, you’ll see me again in a few days or—you’ll never see me at all.”
Payne made no reply. Suddenly he looked up at a house they were passing. It was a small house standing back from the street.
“By the way. We were awfully sorry to hear about that poor fellow Armitage,” he said. “His wife is staying there.”
“Staying there? In that house? Why, I thought she was in ‘King.’”
“No. She came down here about a week ago—she only heard about the poor fellow the day before yesterday.”
“Is she very much cut up?”
“Dreadfully, I’m told. She is staying with another friend of yours—Mrs Hicks.”
“Then she’s in good hands. Look here, Payne. I’ll go in for a moment and ask after her—poor little thing. And if I’m not out in five minutes, just take my horse round to Wood’s and make them off-saddle him and give him a feed. It’s all on my way and it’ll save time. I’ll join you there, if you don’t mind waiting.”
Quickly walking up the little gravel path bordered with orange-trees, and shaded with trellised vines, Claverton knocked gently at the door. A subdued footstep in the silent passage, and it was opened—by Laura. She stared at him in amazement.
“Why, when did you come? I thought you were away at the front. Do come in.” A superfluous request, seeing that she had already shut the door behind him. “Poor Gertie will like to see you.”
“How does she bear it?”
“She is dreadfully down-hearted. At first I was quite alarmed for her, but I think the worst is over now. She was very fond of poor Jack.”
“So were we all. Even such a leather-hearted curmudgeon as your humble servant.”
“It is no fault of yours that the poor fellow is not alive at this moment,” rejoined Laura, with warmth. “We heard all about it.” All this time she had been furtively watching him, and noting, with some astonishment, his listless and dejected air. It was owing to no regret for his deceased comrade, she was certain of that. What could be going wrong with him?
“My dear Laura, I give you my word for it there was nothing to hear,” he replied; and seeing that the subject was distasteful to him, she left him, to go and prepare poor Gertie for his visit.
Claverton wished he could have forgotten his own trouble as he stood in the presence of the young widow—this mere girl—sorrowing for the loss of him with whom she had begun to tread life’s path. Very happy and bright had that path been to her—to them both—during those short two years. Very happy and peaceful would it have continued to be; but now he was gone—snatched away from her suddenly by the merciless bullet of the savage foe—shot down in the dark forest. He lay, cold in his grave, far away in the wilds of Kafirland; and his gleeful laugh, and sunny glance, would gladden her heart and her eyes no more. No wonder a rush of tears came to her eyes, as she remembered under what circumstances she had last seen her visitor. And now she was desolate and alone.
Claverton held her hand in his strong, friendly grasp, and, when the first paroxysm of her reopened grief was spent, gently he narrated the circumstances of poor Armitage’s last moments; how his last thoughts and care had been for her; how her name had been almost the last words upon his lips. Then he dwelt upon the dead man’s popularity, and the blank his loss would leave in the ranks of his comrades, not one of whom but would have risked life to save him had they known before it was too late. And there was that in the gentle, sympathetic voice, which soothed and comforted the girl-widow, sorrowing there as one who had no hope.
“My bright-hearted Jack! I shall never see you again. Would that I had been more loving to you while you were here,” she murmured, and, bowing her head into her hands, again she wept.
“That I am sure you could not have been,” answered Claverton, gently, placing his hand upon her shoulder, and looking down on her with infinite pity. “Child, believe me, there are losses more bitter even than those inflicted upon as by death. Now, I must go. Good-bye—I am returning to camp now; but I shall come and see you again soon, and you must try and keep up your spirits.”
She seized his hand. “You risked your life to save his. No—it’s of no use denying it—you did. God bless you for it, and those who were with you. Tell them from me, when you go back, that I thank them. Good-bye. God bless you—and Lilian.”
This was too much. The chord of his own grief thus suddenly touched, vibrated loudly. With a silent pressure of the hand, he left her.
“Any message for Hicks?” he asked, as Laura met him in the passage.
“What! Why, you are never going back to the front already?” answered she, gazing at him in astonishment.
“I am—straight. In an hour’s time I shall be at least eight or nine miles on the road.”
She saw that he meant it, and her woman’s wit saw at once that something was wrong.
“I am very sorry,” she said. “Do wait ten minutes while I write a line to Alfred. He will like to get it direct, and the post is such a chance.”
A superstitious foreboding took hold of Claverton’s mind as he watched her bending over her writing-case at the other side of the room. This miserable war had made one widow immediately within their own circle, Heaven grant that it might not make two. It seemed that nothing but ill-luck had befallen that once happy circle since he had joined it—as if his presence had something baleful about it, and was destined to work harm to all with whom he came in contact. Ah, well, he had one more mission to fulfil, and then what became of him did not much matter. So Laura having finished her letter he bade her farewell, promising to deliver it as soon as he reached the camp.
“I tell you what it is, Claverton. You’ll have to ride that animal rather carefully, or he’ll never carry you all the way,” remarked Payne, eyeing the horse critically as his rider, having hastily buckled the last strap, swung himself into the saddle.
“No, I’ve ridden his tail nearly off as it is. But I shall meet Sam on the road, and shall change. Good-bye, or rather, so long. You’ll see me again in about a week—barring accidents.”
Payne’s heart sank within him. There wae a reckless, determined ring in the other’s tone that meant volumes; and he shook his head sadly as he watched him ride away down the street. Then he walked slowly home, lost in thought.
Volume Two—Chapter Eighteen.Trapped.“When did he begin to go lame, Sam?”“About two hours the other side of this, Inkos. I had to lead him all the way here.”Claverton bends down again to examine the horse’s leg, and the light of the stable-lantern reveals an expression of the most intense and hopeless disgust upon his face. The stable is that belonging to the inn half-way along the King Williamstown road, the hour is shortly after midnight, and he has only just arrived. He has ridden untiringly, not sparing his mount, which indeed can hardly go a pace further; and now his other horse, which he has been counting on as a relay, is dead lame. It will be remembered that he had left Sam on the road, with orders to rest his horse and follow him at leisure. Shortly after Sam had seen his master’s back disappear over the rising ground, the animal began to go lame. Carefully the Natal boy examined his feet. There was no shoe loose, no stone in the frog—no. Poor Fleck had strained a sinew, and, by dint of much toil and considerable pain, the horse managed to reach the inn with his fetlock swelled to a ball.“Sam, I must get on; and at once. Is there no one here who could sell me a horse?” The native thought a moment. “There are two men who came down from the camp to-day, Inkos, but their horses are used up. There’s a Dutchman going up there, he has an extra horse. That’s it; this one over here,” and, taking the lantern, Sam led the way to the other end of the stable. Claverton ran his eye over the animal designated. It was a large, young horse, well put together and in tolerable condition, but it rolled the whites of its eyes and laid its ears back in suggestive fashion.“Looks skittish,” mused Claverton, as with a wild snort the animal backed and began “rucking” at its tether, then bounding suddenly forward, came with a fracas against the rickety crib, and stood snorting and trembling and rolling its eyes. “Half-broken evidently. What’s the fellow’s name, Sam?”“Oppermann. Cornelius Oppermann, Inkos.”“H’m. Getting light,” he mused, opening the door and looking skywards. “Sam, I’m going to buy that brute anyhow, and go straight on at once. Now you must wait till the young horse is rested, and take him back to Payne’s. Fleck can stay here. And, Sam,” he went on in a graver tone, “you are to wait there till I come back. Do everything they tell you; and if they send you to me, come at once and as quickly as you can. You see?”Sam looked crestfallen. He had reckoned upon accompanying his master back to the war. But with the unswerving loyalty of his race towards those whom they hold in veneration he made no demur, and promised faithfully to carry out his master’s wishes to the best of his ability.Ten minutes later Claverton was standing on thestoepof the inn, bargaining with an unkempt, sandy-bearded Dutchman, who, hastily arrayed in his shirt and trousers, stood rubbing his eyes with the air of a man just aroused from a sound sleep; as, indeed, was the case.“You can take him for forty-five pounds,” the latter was saying, having finished a cavernous yawn.“Ha—ha—ha! Forty-five? Now look here, Oppermann,” answered Claverton in a chaffing, good-natured tone. “You’re not awake yet, man, or you’d remember the brute wasn’t worth a dollar more than twenty. He isn’t half-broken, to begin with.”“Twenty. Nay, what? You shall have him for forty.”“I rather want him, but I’m in no hurry,” was the reply. “Here’s thirty, down on the nail. Look.”He pulled out some notes, and the Dutchman’s eyes glittered.“Thirty-five?” he began.“No. Thirty. Take it or—leave it.”“Well, well. Give me the money,” and he held out his hand. But Claverton was not quite so “green” as all that.“Here, Sam,” he called out. “Look. The Baas has sold me the horse we were looking at for thirty pounds,” and he handed over the money to the expectant Boer, thus making Sam a witness to the transaction. “Now go and saddle him up,” he continued.“Are you starting so soon?” said Oppermann, with surprise. “I’m going up to the camp—we might ride together. Wait a little quarter of an hour.”“Can’t wait a moment longer. Look sharp.”The other disappeared with alacrity. He had been looking forward with some apprehension to his lonely journey across the hostile ground, and the escort and companionship of this cool, clear-headed Englishman would be a perfect godsend to him. So he soon hurried through his scant preparations, and by the time Claverton had settled with the host, and had saddled up, the Boer was nearly ready.Two rough-looking fellows were talking to the landlord in front of the door as Claverton was about to start. They were the two referred to by Sam as having just come from the war.“I say, Mister,” called out one of them. “You’re not going all the way alone, are you?”“Yes.”“Well, now—if I might be so bold as to advise—you be a bit careful. A lot more of them Kafirs have broken out, and there are gangs of ’em out all over this side of the Buffalo range, and that’s where you’ll have to cut through to reach the main camp—unless you go all the way round by ‘King,’ which’ll take you a day longer.”“Well, I shan’t do that, anyhow. Thanks for the hint, all the same. Here, Sam.”“Inkos?”“Don’t forget what I told you, and—here—give this to Miss Lilian.”“This” was a note, and the speaker’s tone trembled ever so slightly over the name.“Yeh bo, Inkos,” replied Sam, earnestly. Then a sudden impulse seized him, and, bending down, he kissed his master’s foot as it rested in the stirrup. A vague superstitious thrill shot through Claverton’s heart. These natives were sometimes gifted with marvellous presage. Did this touching act of homage on the part of his humble follower portend that they would never see each other again. Claverton put out his hand.“Good-bye, Sam. Mind what I told you.”The native took it shyly. Then he turned away, his eyes sparkling as he held up his head proudly. His master had shaken hands with him—a black man. Death itself would be nothing to what he would willingly undergo for that master. Meanwhile the white spectators smiled indulgently among themselves. They did not sneer; a little of Claverton’s reputation had been noised abroad, and they respected him too much. But some of these Englishmen were such queer fellows. Shaking hands with a nigger, for instance—etcetera, etcetera!The temporary diversion afforded by these preparations and precautions over, Claverton’s thoughts again ran in the old channel. He gazed on the mountain range in front of him, peak after peak rising up to the eternal blue, and remembered how they two had looked on them together from that very spot when all seemed so secure and propitious not much more than a couple of months before; and it was like the mocking smile of a demon, this same landscape smiling on him now in the bright fresh morning. Something or other made his mind recur to poor Herbert Spalding plunging overboard in the dead of night deliberately intending to take his own life, and the thought stung him like a spur.Hewould take not his own life, but that of the man who had taken what was far dearer to him than his own life. Every stride of his horse was bringing him nearer and nearer to his sure vengeance.The sound of hoofs behind interrupted his meditations, and the Boer, whom true to his word he had not waited for a minute beyond the stipulated time, overtook him, riding at a gallop. He frowned. In no mood for conversation, he would be obliged to listen to and answer the commonplaces of this lout, and there was no getting rid of him. But the Dutchman was of the taciturn order. In half an hour his topics of conversation were used up, and he was content to jog along in silence by the side of his companion, who certainly gave him no encouragement to break it. Thus the day wore on, and by the middle of the afternoon they were in among the mountains. Hitherto there had been little sign of disturbance. They had passed a few farmsteads and a native kraal or two—the latter still inhabited by so-called “loyals,” in other words, natives who did not fight against the Goverment themselves, but assisted with supplies and information those who did. But even these habitations had ceased now, and they wound their way through the great gloomy gorges covered with dense bush, where the sentinel baboons eat and looked down upon them from many an overhanging cliff, which echoed their loud resounding bark.Suddenly their steeds pricked up their ears, with an inquiring snort. Promptly Claverton’s revolver was in his hand, while his companion held his rifle—an excellent Martini-Henry—ready on his hip. Something was heard approaching.“Kafirs!” exclaimed the Dutchman, excitedly.“Tsh! No; it’s a horseman.”It was—and a strange figure he cut as at that moment he appeared round a bend in the track. A middle-sized, plebeian-looking man, mounted on a sorry nag. His hair, and the wispy scraps of beard stuck about his parchment-coloured visage, were of a neutral tint; and a snub nose, and projecting lower jaw, in no wise prepossessed one towards the individual. He was arrayed in a rusty suit of black, and a dirty white tie was stuck half in half out of the throat of his clerical waistcoat, and he sat his horse “like a tailor;” but the most grotesque article of this out-of-keeping costume was his hat—a reduced “chimney-pot,” with a huge puggaree wound turban-wise about the crown, the ends falling down over the wearer’s back.“Bah!” exclaimed Claverton. “Why, it’s a parson. What the deuce can he be doing here?”The stranger’s countenance lighted up with satisfaction at sight of the pair.“This is a relief,” he said. “I thought I should never get out of this dreadful bush alive.”“Where were you going to?” asked Claverton. “I was going to take a short cut through to Cathcart. They told me the way was safe, and now I find it isn’t. The whole bush is full of Kafirs. I could hear them calling to each other in every direction.”“Quite sure it wasn’t baboons?”“Oh, yes; I saw them—hundreds of them. Luckily they didn’t see me. It was in trying to avoid them that I lost myself.”“Where did you say they were?” went on Claverton. He had formed no very high opinion of his new acquaintance, who informed him that his name was Swaysland, and that he was a missionary.“Over in that next kloof. But you are not going on, surely? The way is not safe, indeed it is not.”“We are, though—straight. But I—”The words were cut short, for the young horse, all unbroken as it was, gave a violent shy, which, taking its rider unawares, nearly unseated him, so unexpected was it. And, simultaneously, several red forms rose up amid the bushes three hundred yards in their rear and poured in a rattling volley, but, as usual, firing well over the heads of their destined victims.“By Jove! there they are,” cried Claverton. “Come along; there’s no turning back now. We must ride like the devil,” and he spurred along the path followed closely by the other two. At least two hundred Kafirs sprang up and started in pursuit, discharging their pieces as they leaped from cover with a fierce shout, and the bullets whistled around the fugitives with a sharp, shrill hiss.“Come on, Mr Swaysland. Spur up that nag of yours; we shall get a good start here,” cried Claverton, as they reached a comparatively open plateau of about a mile in extent. But it was uphill ground and rough withal, and the pursuers were only too evidently gaining on them.Pphit! Pphit! A bullet ploughs up the ground almost between the very hoofs of Claverton’s horse, while another splinters itself against a stone just in front.“The devil! It’s getting lively,” he ejaculated as, without slackening speed, he looked round for a target for his revolver. The missionary was deathly white, and cut a grotesque figure, spurring up his seedy animal, almost holding on round its neck, while the flaps of his long-tailed coat and the ends of his puggaree streamed out behind him. For the life of him Claverton could not repress a laugh.Suddenly the Dutchman lurches in his saddle and falls headlong to the ground—shot dead by one of the pursuers, whose bullet has entered between the shoulders—probably to the great surprise of the marksman. His horse, terrified, starts off, dragging him in the stirrup for a few paces, then his foot disentangles itself and he lies an inanimate heap. With a wild-beast howl the savages bound forward, and Claverton, glancing over his shoulder, can see a score of assegais flash and gleam blood-red in the sunshine, as the fierce warriors crowd round the ill-fated Boer, literally cutting him to pieces.Like wolves delayed in the pursuit of a sledge by a forestalment of the prey which must eventually be theirs, the Kafirs halt for a moment, each eager to bury his spear-head in the body of the fallen man; but it is only for a moment. With a wild yell of triumph they press on—thirsting for more blood. A sudden groan from his companion causes Claverton to turn his head. Is he hit, too? The missionary’s face is livid with terror, and following the glance of the staring, dilated eyeballs—dilated with a fear that has almost mania in it—all hope dies within him. A dense swarm of Kafirs is issuing from the bush immediately in front, and the two white men are thus securely caught, as in a trap. For on the only side left open falls a huge precipice, down which nothing breathing can go—and live.“God help us?” exclaimed the missionary. “We are lost,” and he fell to the ground in a dead faint.Claverton reins in his horse, and confronts the savages, with a calm brow and revolver in hand. Death has overtaken him at last. He has stared the grim Monarch in the face full oft, but now his time has come. He feels that his lucky star has set; his meeting with Lilian yesterday—only yesterday—was the beginning of the end. What can a man do when his star has set? All this runs through his mind like a lightning-flash.It is a marvellous picture, that last scene in the awful drama on this lonely mountain top. The sweet golden sunshine falls upon a crowd of bounding shapes, sweeping forward in a fast diminishing semicircle, and the still air is rent with fiendish howls. Eyeballs roll with a merciless gleam, white teeth are bared in grinning triumph, and the pointed blades of the assegais bristle like a forest among the leaping, naked red bodies. And turning to confront this hideous array—calmly awaiting the approach of his destroyers, this one man—cool, fearless, and noble-looking—sits his horse, whose terrified restiveness he can scarcely curb with one hand, while in the other he holds his revolver in a firm, steady grasp. Before him, the spears of the savage host; behind, the awful brow of the cliff. A ghastly choice.The Kafirs have ceased firing and are advancing eagerly to secure their prey. They will take him alive.“Ha, ha, ha!” A mocking laugh goes up from their midst. “You are in a trap, white man. Better yield!” cry some; while others, eager for such a rare spectacle as a man taking a flying leap into four hundred feet of space, wave their weapons and shout madly in the hope of terrifying the horse and driving it over.“Does even a wolf yield without biting?” is the cold, scornful answer. Not a dozen paces lie between him and the brink of the precipice, towards which he is backing his horse, step by step.Fifty yards—forty—thirty. They approach more leisurely now, sure of their capture.He raises his revolver and fires. One of the foremost falls headlong upon the ground, clutching it with his hands, as his body quivers in the throes of death. But the young horse, maddened by the sudden flash and report and the onward rush of the advancing crowd, plunges and rears, uttering a frenzied squeal. Three steps more. No power short of a miracle can save him now. The frantic hoof-strokes rip up the sward in long furrows—and then a plunge—a slide and a struggle—they are gone! Horse and man have disappeared. A moment of dead silence—a crash and a dull thud is heard far beneath. And then a wild shout—in which awe, and admiration, and baffled rage are all mingled—arises from the savages, one and all of whom press forward to peer over the giddy height.Nothing can they see, however. A few leaves and broken twigs, scattered by the fall of a heavy body through the tangled bushes sprouting here and there from a crevice or ledge in the face of the cliff, float upon the air; beneath, the great sweep of dense bush lies silent and unbroken; a few vultures glide lazily off from the rugged cliffs opposite, looking in the distance like great white feathers as they soar over the broad valley; but nothing is to be seen lying below, neither horse nor man. At length their keen eyes detected a spot where the bush was slightly displaced.“Ha—there he is! Good. His bones will be like the stamped mealies in the mortar, after that jump. Aow!”A low laugh greeted this speech, and the Kafirs were about to turn away in quest of fresh excitement, when one of their number—a tall, evil-looking barbarian—who had been lying flat on his stomach narrowly scanning the bush beneath, exclaimed:“Wait. Are you going to leave him on thechanceof his being dead? He may not be dead, I tell you. He may not be even hurt.”A mighty shout of laughter greeted this utterance.“Ha, ha! Not dead—not even hurt! Whaaow! What madness! Is the white man a bird, that he can fly down there? Did any one see his wings?” Such were the derisive comments on the proposal of the first speaker, who waited with a sneer upon his face until they had done, and then went on:“He is not a bird, but he is something else. He is a wizard—a devil. I tell you I know this white man. He is no ordinary man. I have seen him escape where no one but a wizard could have done it; not once, but twice, three times. Now, are you sure he is dead? Will you leave it to chance?”A murmur of mingled assent and incredulity rose from the listeners. Some shook their heads and smiled scornfully, but the majority evidently thought there was “something in it.”“And even if he is dead,” continued the first speaker. “Even if he is dead, what a war-potion could be made out of the heart of such a man! Haow!”This decided them, and, with a ferocious hum of anticipation, they started off to descend into the valley round the end of the cliff, and make sure of their prey; leaving a few behind to secure the missionary.The unfortunate preacher was still lying where he had fallen in a faint, and the Kafirs had been too fully occupied with their principal foe to pay any attention to him. Now, however, they clustered round him, examining him curiously.“Get up, white man!” cried one of the party, roughly, adding force to the injunction by a sharp prick with his assegai. The victim gave a groan and opened his eyes, but shut them again with a gasp of terror, and a prayer for mercy escaped his lips at the sight of the scowling dark faces and gleaming assegai points, some of them red with blood.A muttered consultation took place. The captive must be taken to the chief, Sandili. He was the first white man captured alive during the war.“Whaow! It is not a warrior, it is a miserableUmfundisi,” (Preacher) said the most important man of the group, with a contemptuous scowl on his fierce, wrinkled countenance. “We shall frighten him to death if we are not careful. Here,Umfundisi!” he continued in a persuasive tone. “Get up. We are not going to hurt you. Don’t be frightened.”The poor missionary could hardly believe his ears.“No, no. I am not frightened,” he replied, in a quavering voice, sitting up and looking around; while several of the younger Kafirs spluttered with laughter at his abject appearance. “No, no—you will not hurt me; I am your friend. I like the Kafirs. You know me—I am a man of peace—not a fighting man—a man of peace.”The savage leader contemplated him with a sneer upon his face, then with a muttered injunction to the rest, he turned away with a grunt of contempt, whisking the tops off the grass-stalks with his knobkerrie as he strode off in the direction taken by the bulk of the party. A scream of terror arose from the unfortunate missionary. His hands had already been tied behind him; and just then one of the young Kafirs, in sheer devilment, jerked his head back and held the cold edge of an assegai against his throat. The unhappy prisoner thought his hour had come, and closed his eyes, shuddering. A roar of laughter arose from the spectators, and his tormentor let go of him, uttering a disdainful “click.”“Take care,” warned one of the older men. “You’ll kill him with fear, among you. That won’t do. He must be taken to the Great Chief.”Meanwhile the searching party had reached the base of the cliff and were working their way along with some difficulty through the bush, while two men remained above to designate the exact spot where the fugitive had fallen. So dense and tangled was the profuse vegetation that it was some time before they could find it, and the rock above, half veiled by largish trees growing up against its surface, afforded no clue. Suddenly a shout announced that the object of their search was found. There, in a hollow formed by its own weight, lay the unfortunate horse. Its legs were doubled under its body, the bones in many places had started through the skin, and it was horribly mangled. The girths had given way and the saddle lay, bent and scratched, partly detached from the carcase. It was a horrid sight.By twos and threes the Kafirs straggling up, clustered around with exclamations of astonishment. Then a shout arose:“Where is the white man?”They looked at one another in blank amazement. There was the horse, sure enough—but—where was the rider?Where, indeed? The ground all round had been carefully searched, and, unless he was gifted with wings as some of them had derisively suggested, he could not have escaped, for at that point the cliff was sheer. Involuntarily they glanced upwards as if they half expected to see him soaring in the air, laughing at them. They turned over the carcase of the horse, with a kind of forlorn hope that he might be lying crushed beneath—but no—he was not there, nor had they even expected he would be. Fairly puzzled they shook their heads, and a volley of ejaculations expressing astonishment, dismay, even alarm, gave vent to their unbounded surprise.“There is no trace. He has disappeared into air?” they said.From all this discussion the tall barbarian who had first suggested the search, had stood aloof. Now he struck in with a kind of “I told you so” expression in his look and voice:“Did I not say that the white man was a wizard? Who laughs now? Where is he? Where is the man who jumped from yon height?”He might well ask. For of the fugitive, alive or dead, there was absolutely no trace. Had his body stuck in one of the trees, or rested on a ledge? No. Those above could see every projection in the rock, and the trees were free from any such burden. And around the spot where the horse lay and on to which it had fallen straight, there was no sign or shadow of a footmark to show whither the human performer of that fearful leap had betaken himself, even if he had reached the ground alive—which was impossible. He had melted into air, and it was nearly evening; to continue the search would be useless.
“When did he begin to go lame, Sam?”
“About two hours the other side of this, Inkos. I had to lead him all the way here.”
Claverton bends down again to examine the horse’s leg, and the light of the stable-lantern reveals an expression of the most intense and hopeless disgust upon his face. The stable is that belonging to the inn half-way along the King Williamstown road, the hour is shortly after midnight, and he has only just arrived. He has ridden untiringly, not sparing his mount, which indeed can hardly go a pace further; and now his other horse, which he has been counting on as a relay, is dead lame. It will be remembered that he had left Sam on the road, with orders to rest his horse and follow him at leisure. Shortly after Sam had seen his master’s back disappear over the rising ground, the animal began to go lame. Carefully the Natal boy examined his feet. There was no shoe loose, no stone in the frog—no. Poor Fleck had strained a sinew, and, by dint of much toil and considerable pain, the horse managed to reach the inn with his fetlock swelled to a ball.
“Sam, I must get on; and at once. Is there no one here who could sell me a horse?” The native thought a moment. “There are two men who came down from the camp to-day, Inkos, but their horses are used up. There’s a Dutchman going up there, he has an extra horse. That’s it; this one over here,” and, taking the lantern, Sam led the way to the other end of the stable. Claverton ran his eye over the animal designated. It was a large, young horse, well put together and in tolerable condition, but it rolled the whites of its eyes and laid its ears back in suggestive fashion.
“Looks skittish,” mused Claverton, as with a wild snort the animal backed and began “rucking” at its tether, then bounding suddenly forward, came with a fracas against the rickety crib, and stood snorting and trembling and rolling its eyes. “Half-broken evidently. What’s the fellow’s name, Sam?”
“Oppermann. Cornelius Oppermann, Inkos.”
“H’m. Getting light,” he mused, opening the door and looking skywards. “Sam, I’m going to buy that brute anyhow, and go straight on at once. Now you must wait till the young horse is rested, and take him back to Payne’s. Fleck can stay here. And, Sam,” he went on in a graver tone, “you are to wait there till I come back. Do everything they tell you; and if they send you to me, come at once and as quickly as you can. You see?”
Sam looked crestfallen. He had reckoned upon accompanying his master back to the war. But with the unswerving loyalty of his race towards those whom they hold in veneration he made no demur, and promised faithfully to carry out his master’s wishes to the best of his ability.
Ten minutes later Claverton was standing on thestoepof the inn, bargaining with an unkempt, sandy-bearded Dutchman, who, hastily arrayed in his shirt and trousers, stood rubbing his eyes with the air of a man just aroused from a sound sleep; as, indeed, was the case.
“You can take him for forty-five pounds,” the latter was saying, having finished a cavernous yawn.
“Ha—ha—ha! Forty-five? Now look here, Oppermann,” answered Claverton in a chaffing, good-natured tone. “You’re not awake yet, man, or you’d remember the brute wasn’t worth a dollar more than twenty. He isn’t half-broken, to begin with.”
“Twenty. Nay, what? You shall have him for forty.”
“I rather want him, but I’m in no hurry,” was the reply. “Here’s thirty, down on the nail. Look.”
He pulled out some notes, and the Dutchman’s eyes glittered.
“Thirty-five?” he began.
“No. Thirty. Take it or—leave it.”
“Well, well. Give me the money,” and he held out his hand. But Claverton was not quite so “green” as all that.
“Here, Sam,” he called out. “Look. The Baas has sold me the horse we were looking at for thirty pounds,” and he handed over the money to the expectant Boer, thus making Sam a witness to the transaction. “Now go and saddle him up,” he continued.
“Are you starting so soon?” said Oppermann, with surprise. “I’m going up to the camp—we might ride together. Wait a little quarter of an hour.”
“Can’t wait a moment longer. Look sharp.”
The other disappeared with alacrity. He had been looking forward with some apprehension to his lonely journey across the hostile ground, and the escort and companionship of this cool, clear-headed Englishman would be a perfect godsend to him. So he soon hurried through his scant preparations, and by the time Claverton had settled with the host, and had saddled up, the Boer was nearly ready.
Two rough-looking fellows were talking to the landlord in front of the door as Claverton was about to start. They were the two referred to by Sam as having just come from the war.
“I say, Mister,” called out one of them. “You’re not going all the way alone, are you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, now—if I might be so bold as to advise—you be a bit careful. A lot more of them Kafirs have broken out, and there are gangs of ’em out all over this side of the Buffalo range, and that’s where you’ll have to cut through to reach the main camp—unless you go all the way round by ‘King,’ which’ll take you a day longer.”
“Well, I shan’t do that, anyhow. Thanks for the hint, all the same. Here, Sam.”
“Inkos?”
“Don’t forget what I told you, and—here—give this to Miss Lilian.”
“This” was a note, and the speaker’s tone trembled ever so slightly over the name.
“Yeh bo, Inkos,” replied Sam, earnestly. Then a sudden impulse seized him, and, bending down, he kissed his master’s foot as it rested in the stirrup. A vague superstitious thrill shot through Claverton’s heart. These natives were sometimes gifted with marvellous presage. Did this touching act of homage on the part of his humble follower portend that they would never see each other again. Claverton put out his hand.
“Good-bye, Sam. Mind what I told you.”
The native took it shyly. Then he turned away, his eyes sparkling as he held up his head proudly. His master had shaken hands with him—a black man. Death itself would be nothing to what he would willingly undergo for that master. Meanwhile the white spectators smiled indulgently among themselves. They did not sneer; a little of Claverton’s reputation had been noised abroad, and they respected him too much. But some of these Englishmen were such queer fellows. Shaking hands with a nigger, for instance—etcetera, etcetera!
The temporary diversion afforded by these preparations and precautions over, Claverton’s thoughts again ran in the old channel. He gazed on the mountain range in front of him, peak after peak rising up to the eternal blue, and remembered how they two had looked on them together from that very spot when all seemed so secure and propitious not much more than a couple of months before; and it was like the mocking smile of a demon, this same landscape smiling on him now in the bright fresh morning. Something or other made his mind recur to poor Herbert Spalding plunging overboard in the dead of night deliberately intending to take his own life, and the thought stung him like a spur.Hewould take not his own life, but that of the man who had taken what was far dearer to him than his own life. Every stride of his horse was bringing him nearer and nearer to his sure vengeance.
The sound of hoofs behind interrupted his meditations, and the Boer, whom true to his word he had not waited for a minute beyond the stipulated time, overtook him, riding at a gallop. He frowned. In no mood for conversation, he would be obliged to listen to and answer the commonplaces of this lout, and there was no getting rid of him. But the Dutchman was of the taciturn order. In half an hour his topics of conversation were used up, and he was content to jog along in silence by the side of his companion, who certainly gave him no encouragement to break it. Thus the day wore on, and by the middle of the afternoon they were in among the mountains. Hitherto there had been little sign of disturbance. They had passed a few farmsteads and a native kraal or two—the latter still inhabited by so-called “loyals,” in other words, natives who did not fight against the Goverment themselves, but assisted with supplies and information those who did. But even these habitations had ceased now, and they wound their way through the great gloomy gorges covered with dense bush, where the sentinel baboons eat and looked down upon them from many an overhanging cliff, which echoed their loud resounding bark.
Suddenly their steeds pricked up their ears, with an inquiring snort. Promptly Claverton’s revolver was in his hand, while his companion held his rifle—an excellent Martini-Henry—ready on his hip. Something was heard approaching.
“Kafirs!” exclaimed the Dutchman, excitedly.
“Tsh! No; it’s a horseman.”
It was—and a strange figure he cut as at that moment he appeared round a bend in the track. A middle-sized, plebeian-looking man, mounted on a sorry nag. His hair, and the wispy scraps of beard stuck about his parchment-coloured visage, were of a neutral tint; and a snub nose, and projecting lower jaw, in no wise prepossessed one towards the individual. He was arrayed in a rusty suit of black, and a dirty white tie was stuck half in half out of the throat of his clerical waistcoat, and he sat his horse “like a tailor;” but the most grotesque article of this out-of-keeping costume was his hat—a reduced “chimney-pot,” with a huge puggaree wound turban-wise about the crown, the ends falling down over the wearer’s back.
“Bah!” exclaimed Claverton. “Why, it’s a parson. What the deuce can he be doing here?”
The stranger’s countenance lighted up with satisfaction at sight of the pair.
“This is a relief,” he said. “I thought I should never get out of this dreadful bush alive.”
“Where were you going to?” asked Claverton. “I was going to take a short cut through to Cathcart. They told me the way was safe, and now I find it isn’t. The whole bush is full of Kafirs. I could hear them calling to each other in every direction.”
“Quite sure it wasn’t baboons?”
“Oh, yes; I saw them—hundreds of them. Luckily they didn’t see me. It was in trying to avoid them that I lost myself.”
“Where did you say they were?” went on Claverton. He had formed no very high opinion of his new acquaintance, who informed him that his name was Swaysland, and that he was a missionary.
“Over in that next kloof. But you are not going on, surely? The way is not safe, indeed it is not.”
“We are, though—straight. But I—”
The words were cut short, for the young horse, all unbroken as it was, gave a violent shy, which, taking its rider unawares, nearly unseated him, so unexpected was it. And, simultaneously, several red forms rose up amid the bushes three hundred yards in their rear and poured in a rattling volley, but, as usual, firing well over the heads of their destined victims.
“By Jove! there they are,” cried Claverton. “Come along; there’s no turning back now. We must ride like the devil,” and he spurred along the path followed closely by the other two. At least two hundred Kafirs sprang up and started in pursuit, discharging their pieces as they leaped from cover with a fierce shout, and the bullets whistled around the fugitives with a sharp, shrill hiss.
“Come on, Mr Swaysland. Spur up that nag of yours; we shall get a good start here,” cried Claverton, as they reached a comparatively open plateau of about a mile in extent. But it was uphill ground and rough withal, and the pursuers were only too evidently gaining on them.
Pphit! Pphit! A bullet ploughs up the ground almost between the very hoofs of Claverton’s horse, while another splinters itself against a stone just in front.
“The devil! It’s getting lively,” he ejaculated as, without slackening speed, he looked round for a target for his revolver. The missionary was deathly white, and cut a grotesque figure, spurring up his seedy animal, almost holding on round its neck, while the flaps of his long-tailed coat and the ends of his puggaree streamed out behind him. For the life of him Claverton could not repress a laugh.
Suddenly the Dutchman lurches in his saddle and falls headlong to the ground—shot dead by one of the pursuers, whose bullet has entered between the shoulders—probably to the great surprise of the marksman. His horse, terrified, starts off, dragging him in the stirrup for a few paces, then his foot disentangles itself and he lies an inanimate heap. With a wild-beast howl the savages bound forward, and Claverton, glancing over his shoulder, can see a score of assegais flash and gleam blood-red in the sunshine, as the fierce warriors crowd round the ill-fated Boer, literally cutting him to pieces.
Like wolves delayed in the pursuit of a sledge by a forestalment of the prey which must eventually be theirs, the Kafirs halt for a moment, each eager to bury his spear-head in the body of the fallen man; but it is only for a moment. With a wild yell of triumph they press on—thirsting for more blood. A sudden groan from his companion causes Claverton to turn his head. Is he hit, too? The missionary’s face is livid with terror, and following the glance of the staring, dilated eyeballs—dilated with a fear that has almost mania in it—all hope dies within him. A dense swarm of Kafirs is issuing from the bush immediately in front, and the two white men are thus securely caught, as in a trap. For on the only side left open falls a huge precipice, down which nothing breathing can go—and live.
“God help us?” exclaimed the missionary. “We are lost,” and he fell to the ground in a dead faint.
Claverton reins in his horse, and confronts the savages, with a calm brow and revolver in hand. Death has overtaken him at last. He has stared the grim Monarch in the face full oft, but now his time has come. He feels that his lucky star has set; his meeting with Lilian yesterday—only yesterday—was the beginning of the end. What can a man do when his star has set? All this runs through his mind like a lightning-flash.
It is a marvellous picture, that last scene in the awful drama on this lonely mountain top. The sweet golden sunshine falls upon a crowd of bounding shapes, sweeping forward in a fast diminishing semicircle, and the still air is rent with fiendish howls. Eyeballs roll with a merciless gleam, white teeth are bared in grinning triumph, and the pointed blades of the assegais bristle like a forest among the leaping, naked red bodies. And turning to confront this hideous array—calmly awaiting the approach of his destroyers, this one man—cool, fearless, and noble-looking—sits his horse, whose terrified restiveness he can scarcely curb with one hand, while in the other he holds his revolver in a firm, steady grasp. Before him, the spears of the savage host; behind, the awful brow of the cliff. A ghastly choice.
The Kafirs have ceased firing and are advancing eagerly to secure their prey. They will take him alive.
“Ha, ha, ha!” A mocking laugh goes up from their midst. “You are in a trap, white man. Better yield!” cry some; while others, eager for such a rare spectacle as a man taking a flying leap into four hundred feet of space, wave their weapons and shout madly in the hope of terrifying the horse and driving it over.
“Does even a wolf yield without biting?” is the cold, scornful answer. Not a dozen paces lie between him and the brink of the precipice, towards which he is backing his horse, step by step.
Fifty yards—forty—thirty. They approach more leisurely now, sure of their capture.
He raises his revolver and fires. One of the foremost falls headlong upon the ground, clutching it with his hands, as his body quivers in the throes of death. But the young horse, maddened by the sudden flash and report and the onward rush of the advancing crowd, plunges and rears, uttering a frenzied squeal. Three steps more. No power short of a miracle can save him now. The frantic hoof-strokes rip up the sward in long furrows—and then a plunge—a slide and a struggle—they are gone! Horse and man have disappeared. A moment of dead silence—a crash and a dull thud is heard far beneath. And then a wild shout—in which awe, and admiration, and baffled rage are all mingled—arises from the savages, one and all of whom press forward to peer over the giddy height.
Nothing can they see, however. A few leaves and broken twigs, scattered by the fall of a heavy body through the tangled bushes sprouting here and there from a crevice or ledge in the face of the cliff, float upon the air; beneath, the great sweep of dense bush lies silent and unbroken; a few vultures glide lazily off from the rugged cliffs opposite, looking in the distance like great white feathers as they soar over the broad valley; but nothing is to be seen lying below, neither horse nor man. At length their keen eyes detected a spot where the bush was slightly displaced.
“Ha—there he is! Good. His bones will be like the stamped mealies in the mortar, after that jump. Aow!”
A low laugh greeted this speech, and the Kafirs were about to turn away in quest of fresh excitement, when one of their number—a tall, evil-looking barbarian—who had been lying flat on his stomach narrowly scanning the bush beneath, exclaimed:
“Wait. Are you going to leave him on thechanceof his being dead? He may not be dead, I tell you. He may not be even hurt.”
A mighty shout of laughter greeted this utterance.
“Ha, ha! Not dead—not even hurt! Whaaow! What madness! Is the white man a bird, that he can fly down there? Did any one see his wings?” Such were the derisive comments on the proposal of the first speaker, who waited with a sneer upon his face until they had done, and then went on:
“He is not a bird, but he is something else. He is a wizard—a devil. I tell you I know this white man. He is no ordinary man. I have seen him escape where no one but a wizard could have done it; not once, but twice, three times. Now, are you sure he is dead? Will you leave it to chance?”
A murmur of mingled assent and incredulity rose from the listeners. Some shook their heads and smiled scornfully, but the majority evidently thought there was “something in it.”
“And even if he is dead,” continued the first speaker. “Even if he is dead, what a war-potion could be made out of the heart of such a man! Haow!”
This decided them, and, with a ferocious hum of anticipation, they started off to descend into the valley round the end of the cliff, and make sure of their prey; leaving a few behind to secure the missionary.
The unfortunate preacher was still lying where he had fallen in a faint, and the Kafirs had been too fully occupied with their principal foe to pay any attention to him. Now, however, they clustered round him, examining him curiously.
“Get up, white man!” cried one of the party, roughly, adding force to the injunction by a sharp prick with his assegai. The victim gave a groan and opened his eyes, but shut them again with a gasp of terror, and a prayer for mercy escaped his lips at the sight of the scowling dark faces and gleaming assegai points, some of them red with blood.
A muttered consultation took place. The captive must be taken to the chief, Sandili. He was the first white man captured alive during the war.
“Whaow! It is not a warrior, it is a miserableUmfundisi,” (Preacher) said the most important man of the group, with a contemptuous scowl on his fierce, wrinkled countenance. “We shall frighten him to death if we are not careful. Here,Umfundisi!” he continued in a persuasive tone. “Get up. We are not going to hurt you. Don’t be frightened.”
The poor missionary could hardly believe his ears.
“No, no. I am not frightened,” he replied, in a quavering voice, sitting up and looking around; while several of the younger Kafirs spluttered with laughter at his abject appearance. “No, no—you will not hurt me; I am your friend. I like the Kafirs. You know me—I am a man of peace—not a fighting man—a man of peace.”
The savage leader contemplated him with a sneer upon his face, then with a muttered injunction to the rest, he turned away with a grunt of contempt, whisking the tops off the grass-stalks with his knobkerrie as he strode off in the direction taken by the bulk of the party. A scream of terror arose from the unfortunate missionary. His hands had already been tied behind him; and just then one of the young Kafirs, in sheer devilment, jerked his head back and held the cold edge of an assegai against his throat. The unhappy prisoner thought his hour had come, and closed his eyes, shuddering. A roar of laughter arose from the spectators, and his tormentor let go of him, uttering a disdainful “click.”
“Take care,” warned one of the older men. “You’ll kill him with fear, among you. That won’t do. He must be taken to the Great Chief.”
Meanwhile the searching party had reached the base of the cliff and were working their way along with some difficulty through the bush, while two men remained above to designate the exact spot where the fugitive had fallen. So dense and tangled was the profuse vegetation that it was some time before they could find it, and the rock above, half veiled by largish trees growing up against its surface, afforded no clue. Suddenly a shout announced that the object of their search was found. There, in a hollow formed by its own weight, lay the unfortunate horse. Its legs were doubled under its body, the bones in many places had started through the skin, and it was horribly mangled. The girths had given way and the saddle lay, bent and scratched, partly detached from the carcase. It was a horrid sight.
By twos and threes the Kafirs straggling up, clustered around with exclamations of astonishment. Then a shout arose:
“Where is the white man?”
They looked at one another in blank amazement. There was the horse, sure enough—but—where was the rider?
Where, indeed? The ground all round had been carefully searched, and, unless he was gifted with wings as some of them had derisively suggested, he could not have escaped, for at that point the cliff was sheer. Involuntarily they glanced upwards as if they half expected to see him soaring in the air, laughing at them. They turned over the carcase of the horse, with a kind of forlorn hope that he might be lying crushed beneath—but no—he was not there, nor had they even expected he would be. Fairly puzzled they shook their heads, and a volley of ejaculations expressing astonishment, dismay, even alarm, gave vent to their unbounded surprise.
“There is no trace. He has disappeared into air?” they said.
From all this discussion the tall barbarian who had first suggested the search, had stood aloof. Now he struck in with a kind of “I told you so” expression in his look and voice:
“Did I not say that the white man was a wizard? Who laughs now? Where is he? Where is the man who jumped from yon height?”
He might well ask. For of the fugitive, alive or dead, there was absolutely no trace. Had his body stuck in one of the trees, or rested on a ledge? No. Those above could see every projection in the rock, and the trees were free from any such burden. And around the spot where the horse lay and on to which it had fallen straight, there was no sign or shadow of a footmark to show whither the human performer of that fearful leap had betaken himself, even if he had reached the ground alive—which was impossible. He had melted into air, and it was nearly evening; to continue the search would be useless.