Chapter Nineteen.Found!They were about to start, when the Kaffir suddenly gave vent to an exclamation, at the same time inclining his head in a listening attitude.“What is it?” asked Webster.“Hush!” muttered Hume.The Kaffir slipped away into the bush on the left, and Hume, with a word to Webster, ran off to the right.A moment later Webster heard the gallop of a horse, and rushed forward with his rifle cocked, expecting he knew not what. Rapidly the hoof-beats struck sharper through the air, there was a crash of branches, a cry from the Kaffir, and a white horse cleared a bush and drew up. His rider lurched forward, and would have fallen had not Webster leapt forward in time. It was a slight boyish form he took in his arms, but as he was stooping with his burden to the ground he saw the face.“Laura—Miss Anstrade!” he cried, trembling as he laid her head on his knee.“Have you stopped the horse?” cried Hume, as he darted up.Webster held up a hand warningly, and Hume went down on his knees, and the two of them, with white faces, gazed at the insensible figure.Her short riding-habit was torn to shreds, her hands were scratched and bleeding, and across her white forehead there was an angry red weal. Her hat was gone, and the heavy plaits of her black hair had broken loose from their bindings.Presently, as they leant over her, half-paralysed by conflicting emotions of joy, fear, and surprise, she opened her eyes, struggled to her feet, and sprang to the side of the horse.“Laura!” they cried.“Ah, heavens, it is you. I thought—” She looked round wildly, then fainted dead away.“Look at her hands, how they have been torn,” and Hume gently pressed his lips to the fingers he held.“Some water!” cried Webster.“Yes, you run for the water;” and Hume passed his arm under the graceful head.Webster looked fiercely across at his friend. “I can support her; you go for the water.”“Klaas,” cried Hume, “water, quick!”Klaas, who had been standing near, hurried up with a tin of water, which both young men attempted to take, the result being that the contents were spilled.“It appears you wish to quarrel,” said Hume.“No, sir; but it is my right to support her.”“You are the first to break the contract which you yourself suggested,” said Hume bitterly; then quickly rising, he went to the waggon, to return with a drop of brandy. A little water was scattered on the white brow, and when presently the dark eyes opened again, the cup was held to her lips.She rose up slowly, and looked long at them.“Ah,” she said, “you must not leave me again.”“Take my arm to the waggon,” said Hume tenderly.“Let me carry you,” whispered Webster as gently.She looked at her wounded hands and smiled, but when she saw the forlorn condition of her dress her feminine instincts rose in alarm. “Gracious heavens,” she murmured, “what a fright!” and vanished into the shelter of the waggon tent without support from either.The two friends regarded each other with cold looks, then fell apart without a word.“Baas,” said Klaas in Kaffir, “here come more horses.”Hume picked up his double express and ran forward into the bush, while Webster, with gloomy and lowering brow, mounted guard at the waggon.“Halt!” rang out Hume’s voice.“Verdomde,” came a startled reply, “what say you?”“Drop that gun, drop it.” There was the dull sound of the gun falling. “Now, come on slowly.”Horse and rider advanced into the open space, and Piet Coetzee sat in the saddle, casting uneasy glances about him.“Dismount,” said Hume sternly.Slowly the young giant swung himself to the ground, and stood sullenly regarding his enemies under his straight brows.“Take the horse, Klaas, find the baas’s gun, and keep watch beyond the bush.”The Kaffir obeyed with a grin.“Now, Piet Coetzee,” said Hume, with a hard look in his keen blue eyes, and a tightening of his lips, “if you have anything to say why you should not be tied to the waggon-wheel and flogged, say it.”Coetzee flushed to his eyes, then folded his arms. “I am not a black man, that you should speak of flogging.”“It is a question of crime, and not of colour.”“Beware what you do or say,” said Piet threateningly; “if you flog a Boer you will be a dead man before the sun has risen again.”“Come—have you anything to say?”“What have I done?”Hume picked up a rheim, made a running noose, and stepped up to the young Boer.“I will kill you first!” hissed Piet, doubling his great fist.“Be quiet,” said Webster; “or I will shoot.”“Oh, yes; you are two to one, and I am unarmed. Cowards!”“And you were two to one when you took away the young lady,” said Hume, and he slipped the noose over the broad shoulders and tightened it.“My God! you will not flog me?”“I will.”“But it is a dog’s punishment. It will disgrace me for ever. Shoot me.”Hume pulled the end of the rheim through the spokes, and pulled on it, then made a hitch. The young Boer placed his foot against the rim, exerted his strength, and snapped the strong hide.“Now,” he shouted furiously, “I will make you shoot,” and with a bound he seized the pole of the scherm and whirled it round his head.“What is this?” said a fresh voice, and Miss Anstrade, looking her old self, except for the angry red mark above her forehead, and the wounds on her white hands, stepped forward.“This is one of the men who carried you away,” said Hume, “and I threatened to flog him unless he could explain.”“It is not so,” said Piet furiously; “you threatened me first and asked me nothing.”“Put your guns down,” said Miss Anstrade.The two friends obeyed.She walked quietly up to Piet, and took the pole from his hand.“You are angry,” she said quietly.“They threatened to flog me—me—a Boer in my own country. Verdomde, when my people hear of it they will whip every uitlander in the place.”“Perhaps they will ask your forgiveness; and what has brought you here?”“I followed you,” he said.“Yes, true, you followed me, and why?”“Because—because—” He dropped his eyes.“Because I rode away?”“Yes, on my horse.”“It was your horse you wanted, then?”“Yes—no—it was you, and my horse which had run away with you.”She laughed. “I see, it was the horse that ran away with me; it was the horse that caused my hands to be torn, it was the horse that came in the night when my friends were away, and carried me off by force.” The smile was on her lips still, but there was such a look of scorn from her eyes that he trembled.“I do not understand,” he said humbly.“You know that I was taken from my friends at night, and you must understand, surely, that that was the act of robbers.”“But he said you wished to escape.”“Who?”“That Portuguese Gobo. He told me you were of his country, and that these men were carrying you off into the desert, so that they could benefit from your death without being detected.”“Is this the truth?”“I am a Boer,” replied the young Dutchman with some dignity, “and I do not work harm to women. If the Portuguese has made a fool of me I will wring his neck.”“He is a bad man. These are my friends who have helped me in great danger, and you caused them great suffering in taking me away. You have acted like a child; but it is because I see you have been misled I forgive you.”She held out her hand, which he took in his, while a flush of manly shame spread over his face.“Now, my brothers,” she said, with a brilliant smile, “all shake hands.”Webster held out his hand frankly, but Hume refused.“What,” she said, “you will not forgive him?”“No, madam. If he has been the tool of a man more cunning than himself, he has been a willing tool. That mark across your forehead—how did it come there?”“From the lash of a rebounding branch, as I galloped through the bush.”“I am very sorry,” said Piet.“Then go,” shouted Hume, “and thank this lady that you have not got what you deserved.”“I will remember you,” growled Piet, as he moved off, “and maybe the sjambok you promised me will fall on your own shoulders.”Hume, with his rifle in his hand, followed the young Boer, and saw him mount and ride away, leading the other horse. On reaching a ridge Piet turned and shook his fist, then suddenly dropping his reins he took a deliberate aim at Hume. A full half-minute he kept the deadly weapon at his shoulder, then, with a laugh, let it drop to the saddle, and disappeared. Hume, who had stood the ordeal with a bitter smile on his mouth, turned back to the camp and met Webster.“Your friend has gone,” he said.“Yes,” said Webster, whose face was deadly pale; “I saw his gun drop, and thought he had meant to shoot you.”“I was wishing he would fire.”“Frank!” exclaimed Webster.They looked at each other straight in the eyes, clasped hands, and then walked back together.Miss Anstrade went to meet them with a smile on her lips and a question in her eyes.“My poor friends,” she murmured softly, “you have suffered a lot. I see it by your faces.”“And you?” they said.“I was confident you would find me if I could not escape.”“We were just starting off,” said Webster, “after Frank had found the waggon and learnt from Klaas that you had been taken off in a cart.”“Yes; they managed that very well. They told me there was a young woman lying ill at a farmhouse near, and asked me if I would not go, and they explained that, anticipating my consent, they had brought the waggon to a spot which would be convenient to you and to them. I saw no reason why I should not do a kindness, and after writing a note for you, which they promised to deliver, I was driven off to a cottage some eight or nine miles away. On alighting, I saw for the first time that one of the two men was a Portuguese, and from his mocking air of courtesy my suspicions were aroused. Of course there was no woman in the house, and on being shown into a room I locked the door. They left me there all the morning, but in the afternoon they begged me to come out. The Dutchman then went away, and through a small window I saw him mount a horse and ride away with a number of dogs. The Portuguese then began to threaten, and next to batter at the door. Then he promised me in his generosity much wealth if I would tell him where you were going, and whether it was to find a hidden treasure.”“The little yellow brute!” growled Webster.“How terrified you must have been!”“On the contrary, I was quite cool, and when the door showed signs of giving way I opened it and asked him to enter. He did, with a sudden change to humility, and as he stepped in with his hat in his hand, I—well—I am afraid I knocked him down with a heavy stick.”“Bravo!” said Webster, laughing, while Hume flashed a swift look at her and saw how rigid were the muscles about her mouth.“I would have escaped then, but on reaching the door I saw there were some black men seated about a fire. Returning to the room, I bound the man up with some ropes that were in the room, and waited. At night the Dutchman returned and knocked at the door. I said it was all right, whereupon—whereupon he laughed. After a time he slept, but the black men sat round the fire till the grey of dawn. Then I stole out, saddled one of the horses, and was silently moving off when one of the dogs barked; the natives shouted, and I was seized with a mortal terror and fled, and my guardian saint led me to you. That is all.”The two friends looked at her for some moments in silence, and they recalled the figure of a girl standing on the bridge in the driving spume, unmoved by the shrieking of shells overhead.They then told her how they had passed the time, and when they had finished, the waggon was inspanned and the journey resumed. As the oxen had well rested, they made this time a long “skoff,” trekking till sundown, when the waggon was drawn up under a wild fig-tree, whose vast branches afforded plenty of shade. Klaas hunted about for some leaves, which he brought to Miss Anstrade to place on her hands. A fire was built, the violin was brought out, and the men sat dreamily as the music floated on the soft air.The next morning Miss Anstrade stepped from the waggon, holding in her hand a small sporting Martini.“I wish to learn how to shoot,” she said gravely.“Good!” said Hume. “It will be as well.”He showed her the action, and made her snap it from the shoulder. Then she inserted a cartridge.“Press the butt tightly to the shoulder, bring the left elbow well down, and press with your thumb as you pull the trigger.”She fired, and then practised at a mark.
They were about to start, when the Kaffir suddenly gave vent to an exclamation, at the same time inclining his head in a listening attitude.
“What is it?” asked Webster.
“Hush!” muttered Hume.
The Kaffir slipped away into the bush on the left, and Hume, with a word to Webster, ran off to the right.
A moment later Webster heard the gallop of a horse, and rushed forward with his rifle cocked, expecting he knew not what. Rapidly the hoof-beats struck sharper through the air, there was a crash of branches, a cry from the Kaffir, and a white horse cleared a bush and drew up. His rider lurched forward, and would have fallen had not Webster leapt forward in time. It was a slight boyish form he took in his arms, but as he was stooping with his burden to the ground he saw the face.
“Laura—Miss Anstrade!” he cried, trembling as he laid her head on his knee.
“Have you stopped the horse?” cried Hume, as he darted up.
Webster held up a hand warningly, and Hume went down on his knees, and the two of them, with white faces, gazed at the insensible figure.
Her short riding-habit was torn to shreds, her hands were scratched and bleeding, and across her white forehead there was an angry red weal. Her hat was gone, and the heavy plaits of her black hair had broken loose from their bindings.
Presently, as they leant over her, half-paralysed by conflicting emotions of joy, fear, and surprise, she opened her eyes, struggled to her feet, and sprang to the side of the horse.
“Laura!” they cried.
“Ah, heavens, it is you. I thought—” She looked round wildly, then fainted dead away.
“Look at her hands, how they have been torn,” and Hume gently pressed his lips to the fingers he held.
“Some water!” cried Webster.
“Yes, you run for the water;” and Hume passed his arm under the graceful head.
Webster looked fiercely across at his friend. “I can support her; you go for the water.”
“Klaas,” cried Hume, “water, quick!”
Klaas, who had been standing near, hurried up with a tin of water, which both young men attempted to take, the result being that the contents were spilled.
“It appears you wish to quarrel,” said Hume.
“No, sir; but it is my right to support her.”
“You are the first to break the contract which you yourself suggested,” said Hume bitterly; then quickly rising, he went to the waggon, to return with a drop of brandy. A little water was scattered on the white brow, and when presently the dark eyes opened again, the cup was held to her lips.
She rose up slowly, and looked long at them.
“Ah,” she said, “you must not leave me again.”
“Take my arm to the waggon,” said Hume tenderly.
“Let me carry you,” whispered Webster as gently.
She looked at her wounded hands and smiled, but when she saw the forlorn condition of her dress her feminine instincts rose in alarm. “Gracious heavens,” she murmured, “what a fright!” and vanished into the shelter of the waggon tent without support from either.
The two friends regarded each other with cold looks, then fell apart without a word.
“Baas,” said Klaas in Kaffir, “here come more horses.”
Hume picked up his double express and ran forward into the bush, while Webster, with gloomy and lowering brow, mounted guard at the waggon.
“Halt!” rang out Hume’s voice.
“Verdomde,” came a startled reply, “what say you?”
“Drop that gun, drop it.” There was the dull sound of the gun falling. “Now, come on slowly.”
Horse and rider advanced into the open space, and Piet Coetzee sat in the saddle, casting uneasy glances about him.
“Dismount,” said Hume sternly.
Slowly the young giant swung himself to the ground, and stood sullenly regarding his enemies under his straight brows.
“Take the horse, Klaas, find the baas’s gun, and keep watch beyond the bush.”
The Kaffir obeyed with a grin.
“Now, Piet Coetzee,” said Hume, with a hard look in his keen blue eyes, and a tightening of his lips, “if you have anything to say why you should not be tied to the waggon-wheel and flogged, say it.”
Coetzee flushed to his eyes, then folded his arms. “I am not a black man, that you should speak of flogging.”
“It is a question of crime, and not of colour.”
“Beware what you do or say,” said Piet threateningly; “if you flog a Boer you will be a dead man before the sun has risen again.”
“Come—have you anything to say?”
“What have I done?”
Hume picked up a rheim, made a running noose, and stepped up to the young Boer.
“I will kill you first!” hissed Piet, doubling his great fist.
“Be quiet,” said Webster; “or I will shoot.”
“Oh, yes; you are two to one, and I am unarmed. Cowards!”
“And you were two to one when you took away the young lady,” said Hume, and he slipped the noose over the broad shoulders and tightened it.
“My God! you will not flog me?”
“I will.”
“But it is a dog’s punishment. It will disgrace me for ever. Shoot me.”
Hume pulled the end of the rheim through the spokes, and pulled on it, then made a hitch. The young Boer placed his foot against the rim, exerted his strength, and snapped the strong hide.
“Now,” he shouted furiously, “I will make you shoot,” and with a bound he seized the pole of the scherm and whirled it round his head.
“What is this?” said a fresh voice, and Miss Anstrade, looking her old self, except for the angry red mark above her forehead, and the wounds on her white hands, stepped forward.
“This is one of the men who carried you away,” said Hume, “and I threatened to flog him unless he could explain.”
“It is not so,” said Piet furiously; “you threatened me first and asked me nothing.”
“Put your guns down,” said Miss Anstrade.
The two friends obeyed.
She walked quietly up to Piet, and took the pole from his hand.
“You are angry,” she said quietly.
“They threatened to flog me—me—a Boer in my own country. Verdomde, when my people hear of it they will whip every uitlander in the place.”
“Perhaps they will ask your forgiveness; and what has brought you here?”
“I followed you,” he said.
“Yes, true, you followed me, and why?”
“Because—because—” He dropped his eyes.
“Because I rode away?”
“Yes, on my horse.”
“It was your horse you wanted, then?”
“Yes—no—it was you, and my horse which had run away with you.”
She laughed. “I see, it was the horse that ran away with me; it was the horse that caused my hands to be torn, it was the horse that came in the night when my friends were away, and carried me off by force.” The smile was on her lips still, but there was such a look of scorn from her eyes that he trembled.
“I do not understand,” he said humbly.
“You know that I was taken from my friends at night, and you must understand, surely, that that was the act of robbers.”
“But he said you wished to escape.”
“Who?”
“That Portuguese Gobo. He told me you were of his country, and that these men were carrying you off into the desert, so that they could benefit from your death without being detected.”
“Is this the truth?”
“I am a Boer,” replied the young Dutchman with some dignity, “and I do not work harm to women. If the Portuguese has made a fool of me I will wring his neck.”
“He is a bad man. These are my friends who have helped me in great danger, and you caused them great suffering in taking me away. You have acted like a child; but it is because I see you have been misled I forgive you.”
She held out her hand, which he took in his, while a flush of manly shame spread over his face.
“Now, my brothers,” she said, with a brilliant smile, “all shake hands.”
Webster held out his hand frankly, but Hume refused.
“What,” she said, “you will not forgive him?”
“No, madam. If he has been the tool of a man more cunning than himself, he has been a willing tool. That mark across your forehead—how did it come there?”
“From the lash of a rebounding branch, as I galloped through the bush.”
“I am very sorry,” said Piet.
“Then go,” shouted Hume, “and thank this lady that you have not got what you deserved.”
“I will remember you,” growled Piet, as he moved off, “and maybe the sjambok you promised me will fall on your own shoulders.”
Hume, with his rifle in his hand, followed the young Boer, and saw him mount and ride away, leading the other horse. On reaching a ridge Piet turned and shook his fist, then suddenly dropping his reins he took a deliberate aim at Hume. A full half-minute he kept the deadly weapon at his shoulder, then, with a laugh, let it drop to the saddle, and disappeared. Hume, who had stood the ordeal with a bitter smile on his mouth, turned back to the camp and met Webster.
“Your friend has gone,” he said.
“Yes,” said Webster, whose face was deadly pale; “I saw his gun drop, and thought he had meant to shoot you.”
“I was wishing he would fire.”
“Frank!” exclaimed Webster.
They looked at each other straight in the eyes, clasped hands, and then walked back together.
Miss Anstrade went to meet them with a smile on her lips and a question in her eyes.
“My poor friends,” she murmured softly, “you have suffered a lot. I see it by your faces.”
“And you?” they said.
“I was confident you would find me if I could not escape.”
“We were just starting off,” said Webster, “after Frank had found the waggon and learnt from Klaas that you had been taken off in a cart.”
“Yes; they managed that very well. They told me there was a young woman lying ill at a farmhouse near, and asked me if I would not go, and they explained that, anticipating my consent, they had brought the waggon to a spot which would be convenient to you and to them. I saw no reason why I should not do a kindness, and after writing a note for you, which they promised to deliver, I was driven off to a cottage some eight or nine miles away. On alighting, I saw for the first time that one of the two men was a Portuguese, and from his mocking air of courtesy my suspicions were aroused. Of course there was no woman in the house, and on being shown into a room I locked the door. They left me there all the morning, but in the afternoon they begged me to come out. The Dutchman then went away, and through a small window I saw him mount a horse and ride away with a number of dogs. The Portuguese then began to threaten, and next to batter at the door. Then he promised me in his generosity much wealth if I would tell him where you were going, and whether it was to find a hidden treasure.”
“The little yellow brute!” growled Webster.
“How terrified you must have been!”
“On the contrary, I was quite cool, and when the door showed signs of giving way I opened it and asked him to enter. He did, with a sudden change to humility, and as he stepped in with his hat in his hand, I—well—I am afraid I knocked him down with a heavy stick.”
“Bravo!” said Webster, laughing, while Hume flashed a swift look at her and saw how rigid were the muscles about her mouth.
“I would have escaped then, but on reaching the door I saw there were some black men seated about a fire. Returning to the room, I bound the man up with some ropes that were in the room, and waited. At night the Dutchman returned and knocked at the door. I said it was all right, whereupon—whereupon he laughed. After a time he slept, but the black men sat round the fire till the grey of dawn. Then I stole out, saddled one of the horses, and was silently moving off when one of the dogs barked; the natives shouted, and I was seized with a mortal terror and fled, and my guardian saint led me to you. That is all.”
The two friends looked at her for some moments in silence, and they recalled the figure of a girl standing on the bridge in the driving spume, unmoved by the shrieking of shells overhead.
They then told her how they had passed the time, and when they had finished, the waggon was inspanned and the journey resumed. As the oxen had well rested, they made this time a long “skoff,” trekking till sundown, when the waggon was drawn up under a wild fig-tree, whose vast branches afforded plenty of shade. Klaas hunted about for some leaves, which he brought to Miss Anstrade to place on her hands. A fire was built, the violin was brought out, and the men sat dreamily as the music floated on the soft air.
The next morning Miss Anstrade stepped from the waggon, holding in her hand a small sporting Martini.
“I wish to learn how to shoot,” she said gravely.
“Good!” said Hume. “It will be as well.”
He showed her the action, and made her snap it from the shoulder. Then she inserted a cartridge.
“Press the butt tightly to the shoulder, bring the left elbow well down, and press with your thumb as you pull the trigger.”
She fired, and then practised at a mark.
Chapter Twenty.A Mysterious Cry.For the next fortnight they struggled with the difficulties of the road, and Hume had to call to his aid all his resources in navigating his ship of the desert over boulder-strewn streams, up almost impracticable heights, and down dangerous slopes, wherever the road zig-zagged above yawning precipices. His bared arms grew black under the sun, and by the time the Limpopo was reached he resembled in appearance one of the scattered Boer farmers whom they occasionally surprised in their journey—a man tanned to the colour of his own well-worn corduroys, with a face lined by the drying of the skin, the eyes narrowed through the constant effort to shut out the over-powerful light, and hands bruised, knotted and grimed. In this toilsome trek Webster had to squire Miss Anstrade, and since she dreaded the sight of the oxen straining under the yoke, and would get away from the sharp crack of the long whip, he was thrown much into her company as they walked on ahead for the next outspan. In the loneliness of the slow marches Hume soured rather, and in the evening by the fire it was some time before his silent fit would thaw to the needs of companionship, and the others, having exhausted every topic during the day’stête-à-tête, made little effort to dispel the gloom. In the veld there are few topics that can outlast a week, and then there is little to fall back upon but the eternal subject of religion, or the ways of nature. Wherever nature is uninteresting and the population is scattered, the mind of man fastens like a limpet on the rock of some verity of the Scriptures, or to the decaying trunk of superstition, and holds on to the end. The Boers in the Transvaal have quarrelled among themselves over their belief, and President Kruger has taken up his rifle in defence of a verse in the Psalms. Our friends had played about on the outskirts of religious controversy about the camp fire; but the men had been firmly checked by Miss Anstrade, who possessed a woman’s unquestioning faith, and latterly they had become abstracted and dull, while Klaas, the Gaika, crooned to himself the legends that hung about the dark kloofs of his own far-distant Amatolas.“Thank God!” said Hume, as he threw down his whip on the far side of the great river, “we have at last got out of the Transvaal.”“It seemed to me,” said Miss Anstrade, “that we were going on for ever until the waggon fell to pieces, and we grew too old to see. I have never been so dull in all my life, and am convinced there is a growth of fungus on my brain.”“And I,” said Webster, looking at his travel-stained clothes, “feel that I am turning into a second Rip Van Winkle.”“We are like a party of disreputable gipsies,” said Miss Anstrade, with a look at Hume, whose boots were torn, and whose outward appearance was scarcely an improvement on the many-patched garments of Klaas. “Let us get into a new outfit, and do you men act the barber to each other.”“Before recovering our respectability,” said Hume, “we must overhaul the waggon, grease the axles, repack, mend, and patch up.”They made a stay there, and the next evening, after several hours of hard work, the camp presented a trim appearance, and the three sat down, quite smartened up, and in good spirits once again, to dine off wild ducks and sand grouse. The map of Old Hume the Hunter was brought out and studied now on the very ground over which he had passed on his adventurous journey, and they found themselves, in their growing excitement, looking away to the south-east, to where the shadowy outlines of lofty mountains showed dark against the sky. Somewhere within that rugged casket lay the treasure that throughout the centuries had remained for them alone, and the flickering light shining upon their faces showed the flush in their cheeks as the thoughts of what its possession would mean flamed in their brains; revealed also the stern look shot from one man at the other, at the second thought that, bound up with that treasure of gold, was that other treasure of a beautiful woman.“Beyond that mountain,” she said dreamily, in her rich voice, “lies Europe, ambition, power, pleasure, love. I wonder which of these you will follow when the mountains have given up their secret.”“Give me a house by the sea,” said Webster, “and a wife I love, and who loves me.”“And the sound of the sea would stir the sailor in you, and one day your wife would be looking at a white speck in the horizon, and you would be walking the bridge again.”“And she would not grudge me that if she loved me,” he said quietly.Hume cast a swift look at Webster, whose face had turned white, and he had reached out his hand, for to both of them there came, at that moment, the thought of Captain Pardoe and his betrothed.“What is it?” she asked, noting the action.Hume looked at Webster, and then told the story of the lovers who had waited so long.“But how,” she said, in low tones, “did you know each other’s thoughts?”The two looked at each other.“We also are waiting,” said Hume, with a sad smile; but from that moment the shadow of distrust that was coming between them melted before the sympathy revealed by that one chance word.They talked then, as they had often done before, of Captain Pardoe and the gallant men who went down on theSwift, and planned how they would help the widows and children out of the Golden Rock. And as they talked there came through the darkness a startling cry as of a human soul in agony—so wild, so sudden, that they leant towards each other, and Klaas bolted under the waggon with a cry of “Amapakati!”—“Wizard!”Again it was repeated, a long quivering cry.Hume took his rifle from where it stood against the waggon, and, bidding Webster stay, slipped into the darkness. The minutes passed by slowly to those two, standing with bated breath, listening for any cry or token that would break the spell. Ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour, went wearily by, and still there was no sign; then Webster shouted, but without response, then fired his rifle.“I must go after him,” he said.“And I will go, too. We should not have let him face that terrible darkness alone.”“I will go alone.”“No, no, I cannot stay behind. Let me get the lantern,” she said feverishly, and quickly unhitched the lantern from its hook under the canvas “scherm,” at the same time picking up her rifle.“This way,” said Webster, and they descended rapidly the slope leading to the river, from which there came a rippling noise strangely mysterious in the dark. The shaft of light swept around from left to right over rocks and ant-hills, and nodding bushes, and at every dark object they strained their eyes. Then there came a sound that chilled their blood: the noise of a body falling in the water, followed by a deep groan.“Frank,” she cried; “Frank, where are you?”The reply was unexpected and startling.“He is dead,” said a voice, hollow and unnatural; “and so will perish all who try to find his secret.”Miss Anstrade shuddered with horror, and clutched Webster by the arm.“What is it?” she asked, in a thrilling tone.With an answering shudder, Webster threw up his gun and fired in the direction of the voice. After the brilliant flash, the darkness closed in blacker than before, and when the echoes of the report had rolled away in the sullen mutterings down the valley the silence was the deeper. They waited long, then went on quickly to the river, where they stood above the rushes, looking at the gleam upon the dark water, and listening with pale faces and beating hearts to faint whisperings and gurgling noises. Webster put his hand to his mouth and called, but his voice broke in a hoarse whisper, and he called again. There was no answer but the wail of a jackal, and after that the far-off booming of a lion’s roar.“It is horrible,” she whispered, looking round over her shoulder, and pressing closer.“Let me take you back.”“No, this way; let us go along the river.”Again there came a splash from the river, and then, within the shaft of light flashing on the water, there glowed two glittering green specks.“Look!” she said, with a gasp.“Hold the lantern,” he said quickly. The rifle rang out, and then the water was lashed into foam, and a dark body showed for a moment in the light.“A crocodile,” he said, with a nervous laugh.“A crocodile! Can it—oh, merciful heavens—do you remember when we saw theIrene—the shark?”“Don’t,” he said, laying his hand on her shoulder.A deep sigh came to their straining ears, followed by a confused noise.“Oh,” she cried, “if I could only see what forms there are about I would not be afraid.”“I think that noise is from the oxen,” he said.“Baas,” came a warning shout, “pass op de leeuw!”“That is Klaas—what does he cry? The leeuw—the lion—is it not? Ah, that is better. Give me the lantern again.”She took the lantern, while Webster, with his rifle ready, kept by her shoulder, and they slowly advanced, following the shaft of light for the reflection of the lion’s eyes. Presently an ox moaned, there was a sound of horns clashing as the oxen bunched together, then the ground trembled to the roar of a lion, followed by the wild rush and crashing of branches. When they reached the waggon there was not an ox remaining. The Gaika, who loved his cattle, was raging about with a lighted brand in one hand and an assegai in the other, hurling insults at the lion.“Mij ossa,” he said; “mij mooi swaart-bonte; oh! verdomde leeuw!”“Where is the baas?” asked Webster, at his wits’ end.“The baas is dead,” cried the Gaika; “mij ossa es dood, und ek is dood.”Webster took the Kaffir by the arm and shook him. “Stop this noise and build up the fire.”Klaas obeyed, piling dead brushwood on the coals till the flames mounted up, and shone on the white canvas and on the pale faces of Miss Anstrade and Webster, who stood looking out into the darkness for their missing friend. From far there sounded the wild bellow of an ox, followed presently by the complaining, wailing cry of a jackal and the devilish laugh of a hyaena.“The lion eats,” muttered the Kaffir.They longed for the light of day to reveal the dark mystery that hedged them in, and, above all, the meaning of that voice and its warning.“Klaas, did you hear someone calling before I fired the first time?”“Neh, sieur, I heard the lady call, and then the voice of the jackal, who led the lion here.”“Can we have been mistaken?” she whispered; “and yet I heard it plainly: ‘He is dead, and so will perish all who seek his secret.’”“He cannot be dead,” said Webster fiercely; “I will search again.”This time Miss Anstrade remained by the fire, her rifle across her knees, and her eyes following the Will-o’-the-Wisp-like flashings of the lantern, while out of the blackness there rang the voice of Webster calling for his friend, a mournful cry that drew no response but the murmur of the river, and the still more plaintive call of a plover overhead. And sitting by the fire, with the light shining in her eyes, and her face resting on her hands, she still heard the voice calling out that Hume was dead, and she was sitting so when, after a long search, Webster came wearily and hopelessly back.Before the morning, completely worn out, they dozed at their posts, and when there was light enough to show the ground the Gaika slipped away like a shadow towards the river, quartering the ground as he went, with his body bent, and his thin wide nostrils quivering. Reaching the river, he dwelt awhile over the spoor made by Webster, picking up an empty cartridge, then went up to the right, and presently, with a startled look, darted forward to where there projected the butt of a rifle from the rushes. It was Hume’s, and as he lifted it his quick glances roamed over the ground, noting the bruised grass, and then with a “Yoh” he jumped back, for a man stood beneath a tree looking at him with feverish eyes.“Yinny,” said Klaas, fingering his assegai, and stooping his head to get a clearer view of the figure which was in the shade, then he rushed to the tree with a cry, “Baas, baas!”It was indeed Frank Hume, gagged and fast bound to a mimosa-tree.As the sun streamed over the valley the two sleepers by the dying fire awakened, and their haggard faces told how real had been the nightmare of the long night. The morning mist lay in a thick blanket over the river, and they shuddered to think what tragedy lay concealed under that winding-sheet, then started up to the sound of muffled voices, and the next minute advanced to meet two forms that loomed up vast.“Halloa!” came a hail in a well-known voice.“Thank God!” cried Webster, springing forward; but Miss Anstrade stood with her hand to her heart, looking wildly at this apparition.
For the next fortnight they struggled with the difficulties of the road, and Hume had to call to his aid all his resources in navigating his ship of the desert over boulder-strewn streams, up almost impracticable heights, and down dangerous slopes, wherever the road zig-zagged above yawning precipices. His bared arms grew black under the sun, and by the time the Limpopo was reached he resembled in appearance one of the scattered Boer farmers whom they occasionally surprised in their journey—a man tanned to the colour of his own well-worn corduroys, with a face lined by the drying of the skin, the eyes narrowed through the constant effort to shut out the over-powerful light, and hands bruised, knotted and grimed. In this toilsome trek Webster had to squire Miss Anstrade, and since she dreaded the sight of the oxen straining under the yoke, and would get away from the sharp crack of the long whip, he was thrown much into her company as they walked on ahead for the next outspan. In the loneliness of the slow marches Hume soured rather, and in the evening by the fire it was some time before his silent fit would thaw to the needs of companionship, and the others, having exhausted every topic during the day’stête-à-tête, made little effort to dispel the gloom. In the veld there are few topics that can outlast a week, and then there is little to fall back upon but the eternal subject of religion, or the ways of nature. Wherever nature is uninteresting and the population is scattered, the mind of man fastens like a limpet on the rock of some verity of the Scriptures, or to the decaying trunk of superstition, and holds on to the end. The Boers in the Transvaal have quarrelled among themselves over their belief, and President Kruger has taken up his rifle in defence of a verse in the Psalms. Our friends had played about on the outskirts of religious controversy about the camp fire; but the men had been firmly checked by Miss Anstrade, who possessed a woman’s unquestioning faith, and latterly they had become abstracted and dull, while Klaas, the Gaika, crooned to himself the legends that hung about the dark kloofs of his own far-distant Amatolas.
“Thank God!” said Hume, as he threw down his whip on the far side of the great river, “we have at last got out of the Transvaal.”
“It seemed to me,” said Miss Anstrade, “that we were going on for ever until the waggon fell to pieces, and we grew too old to see. I have never been so dull in all my life, and am convinced there is a growth of fungus on my brain.”
“And I,” said Webster, looking at his travel-stained clothes, “feel that I am turning into a second Rip Van Winkle.”
“We are like a party of disreputable gipsies,” said Miss Anstrade, with a look at Hume, whose boots were torn, and whose outward appearance was scarcely an improvement on the many-patched garments of Klaas. “Let us get into a new outfit, and do you men act the barber to each other.”
“Before recovering our respectability,” said Hume, “we must overhaul the waggon, grease the axles, repack, mend, and patch up.”
They made a stay there, and the next evening, after several hours of hard work, the camp presented a trim appearance, and the three sat down, quite smartened up, and in good spirits once again, to dine off wild ducks and sand grouse. The map of Old Hume the Hunter was brought out and studied now on the very ground over which he had passed on his adventurous journey, and they found themselves, in their growing excitement, looking away to the south-east, to where the shadowy outlines of lofty mountains showed dark against the sky. Somewhere within that rugged casket lay the treasure that throughout the centuries had remained for them alone, and the flickering light shining upon their faces showed the flush in their cheeks as the thoughts of what its possession would mean flamed in their brains; revealed also the stern look shot from one man at the other, at the second thought that, bound up with that treasure of gold, was that other treasure of a beautiful woman.
“Beyond that mountain,” she said dreamily, in her rich voice, “lies Europe, ambition, power, pleasure, love. I wonder which of these you will follow when the mountains have given up their secret.”
“Give me a house by the sea,” said Webster, “and a wife I love, and who loves me.”
“And the sound of the sea would stir the sailor in you, and one day your wife would be looking at a white speck in the horizon, and you would be walking the bridge again.”
“And she would not grudge me that if she loved me,” he said quietly.
Hume cast a swift look at Webster, whose face had turned white, and he had reached out his hand, for to both of them there came, at that moment, the thought of Captain Pardoe and his betrothed.
“What is it?” she asked, noting the action.
Hume looked at Webster, and then told the story of the lovers who had waited so long.
“But how,” she said, in low tones, “did you know each other’s thoughts?”
The two looked at each other.
“We also are waiting,” said Hume, with a sad smile; but from that moment the shadow of distrust that was coming between them melted before the sympathy revealed by that one chance word.
They talked then, as they had often done before, of Captain Pardoe and the gallant men who went down on theSwift, and planned how they would help the widows and children out of the Golden Rock. And as they talked there came through the darkness a startling cry as of a human soul in agony—so wild, so sudden, that they leant towards each other, and Klaas bolted under the waggon with a cry of “Amapakati!”—“Wizard!”
Again it was repeated, a long quivering cry.
Hume took his rifle from where it stood against the waggon, and, bidding Webster stay, slipped into the darkness. The minutes passed by slowly to those two, standing with bated breath, listening for any cry or token that would break the spell. Ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour, went wearily by, and still there was no sign; then Webster shouted, but without response, then fired his rifle.
“I must go after him,” he said.
“And I will go, too. We should not have let him face that terrible darkness alone.”
“I will go alone.”
“No, no, I cannot stay behind. Let me get the lantern,” she said feverishly, and quickly unhitched the lantern from its hook under the canvas “scherm,” at the same time picking up her rifle.
“This way,” said Webster, and they descended rapidly the slope leading to the river, from which there came a rippling noise strangely mysterious in the dark. The shaft of light swept around from left to right over rocks and ant-hills, and nodding bushes, and at every dark object they strained their eyes. Then there came a sound that chilled their blood: the noise of a body falling in the water, followed by a deep groan.
“Frank,” she cried; “Frank, where are you?”
The reply was unexpected and startling.
“He is dead,” said a voice, hollow and unnatural; “and so will perish all who try to find his secret.”
Miss Anstrade shuddered with horror, and clutched Webster by the arm.
“What is it?” she asked, in a thrilling tone.
With an answering shudder, Webster threw up his gun and fired in the direction of the voice. After the brilliant flash, the darkness closed in blacker than before, and when the echoes of the report had rolled away in the sullen mutterings down the valley the silence was the deeper. They waited long, then went on quickly to the river, where they stood above the rushes, looking at the gleam upon the dark water, and listening with pale faces and beating hearts to faint whisperings and gurgling noises. Webster put his hand to his mouth and called, but his voice broke in a hoarse whisper, and he called again. There was no answer but the wail of a jackal, and after that the far-off booming of a lion’s roar.
“It is horrible,” she whispered, looking round over her shoulder, and pressing closer.
“Let me take you back.”
“No, this way; let us go along the river.”
Again there came a splash from the river, and then, within the shaft of light flashing on the water, there glowed two glittering green specks.
“Look!” she said, with a gasp.
“Hold the lantern,” he said quickly. The rifle rang out, and then the water was lashed into foam, and a dark body showed for a moment in the light.
“A crocodile,” he said, with a nervous laugh.
“A crocodile! Can it—oh, merciful heavens—do you remember when we saw theIrene—the shark?”
“Don’t,” he said, laying his hand on her shoulder.
A deep sigh came to their straining ears, followed by a confused noise.
“Oh,” she cried, “if I could only see what forms there are about I would not be afraid.”
“I think that noise is from the oxen,” he said.
“Baas,” came a warning shout, “pass op de leeuw!”
“That is Klaas—what does he cry? The leeuw—the lion—is it not? Ah, that is better. Give me the lantern again.”
She took the lantern, while Webster, with his rifle ready, kept by her shoulder, and they slowly advanced, following the shaft of light for the reflection of the lion’s eyes. Presently an ox moaned, there was a sound of horns clashing as the oxen bunched together, then the ground trembled to the roar of a lion, followed by the wild rush and crashing of branches. When they reached the waggon there was not an ox remaining. The Gaika, who loved his cattle, was raging about with a lighted brand in one hand and an assegai in the other, hurling insults at the lion.
“Mij ossa,” he said; “mij mooi swaart-bonte; oh! verdomde leeuw!”
“Where is the baas?” asked Webster, at his wits’ end.
“The baas is dead,” cried the Gaika; “mij ossa es dood, und ek is dood.”
Webster took the Kaffir by the arm and shook him. “Stop this noise and build up the fire.”
Klaas obeyed, piling dead brushwood on the coals till the flames mounted up, and shone on the white canvas and on the pale faces of Miss Anstrade and Webster, who stood looking out into the darkness for their missing friend. From far there sounded the wild bellow of an ox, followed presently by the complaining, wailing cry of a jackal and the devilish laugh of a hyaena.
“The lion eats,” muttered the Kaffir.
They longed for the light of day to reveal the dark mystery that hedged them in, and, above all, the meaning of that voice and its warning.
“Klaas, did you hear someone calling before I fired the first time?”
“Neh, sieur, I heard the lady call, and then the voice of the jackal, who led the lion here.”
“Can we have been mistaken?” she whispered; “and yet I heard it plainly: ‘He is dead, and so will perish all who seek his secret.’”
“He cannot be dead,” said Webster fiercely; “I will search again.”
This time Miss Anstrade remained by the fire, her rifle across her knees, and her eyes following the Will-o’-the-Wisp-like flashings of the lantern, while out of the blackness there rang the voice of Webster calling for his friend, a mournful cry that drew no response but the murmur of the river, and the still more plaintive call of a plover overhead. And sitting by the fire, with the light shining in her eyes, and her face resting on her hands, she still heard the voice calling out that Hume was dead, and she was sitting so when, after a long search, Webster came wearily and hopelessly back.
Before the morning, completely worn out, they dozed at their posts, and when there was light enough to show the ground the Gaika slipped away like a shadow towards the river, quartering the ground as he went, with his body bent, and his thin wide nostrils quivering. Reaching the river, he dwelt awhile over the spoor made by Webster, picking up an empty cartridge, then went up to the right, and presently, with a startled look, darted forward to where there projected the butt of a rifle from the rushes. It was Hume’s, and as he lifted it his quick glances roamed over the ground, noting the bruised grass, and then with a “Yoh” he jumped back, for a man stood beneath a tree looking at him with feverish eyes.
“Yinny,” said Klaas, fingering his assegai, and stooping his head to get a clearer view of the figure which was in the shade, then he rushed to the tree with a cry, “Baas, baas!”
It was indeed Frank Hume, gagged and fast bound to a mimosa-tree.
As the sun streamed over the valley the two sleepers by the dying fire awakened, and their haggard faces told how real had been the nightmare of the long night. The morning mist lay in a thick blanket over the river, and they shuddered to think what tragedy lay concealed under that winding-sheet, then started up to the sound of muffled voices, and the next minute advanced to meet two forms that loomed up vast.
“Halloa!” came a hail in a well-known voice.
“Thank God!” cried Webster, springing forward; but Miss Anstrade stood with her hand to her heart, looking wildly at this apparition.
Chapter Twenty One.The Unknown.“Thank Heaven you are alive!” cried Miss Anstrade, taking his hand in both of hers, and looking with tear-dimmed eyes into his face. “It seemed I was not free here from the curse that falls on those who are dear to me.”She drew him to a seat, still holding his hand, and Webster, busily engaged in making hot coffee, stopped at times to place his hand affectionately on Frank’s shoulder.“And where have you been all this fearful night?”“Tied to a tree. Three times the light from your lantern fell upon me, and twice a hyaena came and stared at me. Ugh, the brute!”“Tied to a tree? How did it happen, and that voice, did you hear it calling?”Frank shuddered slightly.“I heard it,” he said, “and I would have thought it supernatural, so like my uncle’s voice it was, had it been possible for a spirit to knock me down and bind me.”“Strange,” she murmured. “I also thought it was your uncle calling, though I had never seen or heard him.”“It struck me to the marrow,” said Webster, “and I fired at the sound out of sheer terror.”They all sat silent for some time pondering over the mystery.“It is beyond me,” said Hume wearily. “When I left you last night I expected to find some black, perhaps a woman, from the terror in the sound of her cry, fallen into the river, or caught by a crocodile, and I ran down to the bank, making noise enough to inform anyone of my whereabouts. On reaching the river I stood still, and without the slightest warning was felled to the ground. On recovering consciousness I found myself bound to a tree and gagged. It all happened within the space of ten minutes after leaving the waggon.”“The cry was a decoy, then?”“It must have been.”“You saw no one?”“No, nor heard the step of my assailant, though at the time I was listening intently.”“His feet must have been naked, then?”“Not necessarily, for he may have worn veldschoens, which give no sound. I examined the ground with Klaas before coming up, and we could see no spoor beyond that made by our party.”“What possible object could he have had,” mused Webster, “since it was not your death he sought? Do you think he mistook you for someone else?”“Impossible! Whoever did it must have watched us, and he could only have mistaken me for you. No one has a grudge against you.”“I see it!” cried Miss Anstrade, who had been looking with knitted brows into the fire. “Just before dusk we were talking of the Golden Rock. It was possible for an enemy to creep up undetected and to listen to our talk.”“Yes,” said Hume, and he felt for the pocket-book that contained the map.“That is it,” she cried; “they have taken your secret.”Frank opened the book with trembling fingers, while the others gazed anxiously, leaning forward.“It is gone,” he said, starting up.While they looked at each other, with pale faces, Klaas came up.“Baas,” he said in a low voice. “Baas,” he repeated.“Well?” said Hume sharply.“De ossa is gone.”“What!” shouted Hume, glad for some excuse to give vent to the anger and bitter disappointment that filled him.“They were stampeded by lions,” said Webster.“Didn’t I tell you to have them properly tied?”“Yoh, my baas! But the rheims; someone cut them in the night. Come, see!”“Good heavens! Can this be true?”They ran to the trek-tow, and there saw that the tough rheims which secured each ox to the chain had been severed by a sharp instrument.Hume laughed bitterly.“Upon my soul,” he said, “you must think me a nice leader.”“We can walk,” said Miss Anstrade, looking to the distant mountains.“We could make a raft from the waggon timber, and float down the river,” said Webster.“It is not the loss of the oxen I fear. We will recover enough of them to continue; it is the ease with which these unknown enemies have succeeded in their plans that troubles me. Now that I have lost the map I believe there does exist a Golden Rock, and their cunning and superior woodcraft will enable them to win it.”“Nonsense,” she said; “they succeeded because we were off our guard. Now we know what we have to expect, we will oppose our wits to their cunning.”“It is too late—they have the map—and will have a long start.”“There was nothing in the map,” said Webster, “that I could not describe with a stick on this patch of sand.”“Besides,” she said, with spirit, “do you suppose I am going to give up the search after coming all this way?”“You are right,” replied Hume; “but it does not improve one’s spirit to be fast bound to a tree all night with a handkerchief in your mouth. Map or no map, we must find the Golden Rock.”“That is better,” she said, with a smile. “Now, then, let us do something.”Klaas set the example by starting off on the spoor of the oxen, armed with assegai and kerrie. Miss Anstrade sat down to draw, from memory, a facsimile of the lost map; Hume walked on to a small kopje to plan out the route, for there was no trace of road here; while Webster went down to the river to see whether he could decipher any explanation of the night’s mystery on its broad and shining surface. Long he listened to the murmur and ripple of the shallow river against huge round and jagged boulders strewn across its bed, and gazed into the dark beds of shade cast by the wild palmiet, but nowhere was there any trace of human life—not so much even as a piece of driftwood fashioned by man, or a broken beer-bottle, sign throughout the world of the passage of roaming Englishmen. Overhead passed a flight of cranes, their long legs trailing behind like rudders to steer them in their heavy flight, and from their long bills emitting, at intervals, the harsh cry with Nature’s melancholy note, while flocks of “sprews,” the white-bellied African starlings, flew, with noisy clatter, from side to side, and grey monkeys, their black faces rimmed in white, grimaced from waving branches. As he went down the bank, in and out among the thick bushes and clinging thorns, he started a troop of wild buffalo, which crashed off with many an angry snort, and a minute later was brought to a sudden stand by a moaning sound of no great volume, but conveying an undoubted warning. It proceeded from a cluster of rushes, and he moved his head from side to side in an endeavour to see what caused it, succeeding presently in detecting a slight movement made apparently by a small creature like a rat. Smiling at his doubts, he stepped forward, when once again the moaning was repeated, and he stooped down to peer more narrowly into the thicket. Then he saw that the small object was the tuft of a tail, and following the direction, he made the indistinct outline of a large animal crouching flat, and then, with a start, he met the full, fierce gaze of the yellow eyes. Cautiously he stepped back foot by foot until he reached the shelter of a tree, when the rushes shook, and out sprung a full-grown lion, which, after one look at him, trotted off after the buffalo which he had evidently been stalking.“Phew!” said Webster, his heart thumping, “I suppose Frank would have shot the beggar, but hang me if I wasn’t pleased to see him cut.”He waited for some time till his heart beat more regularly, then advanced with greater caution, examining each cluster of rushes and dark patch of bushes very carefully before passing. Half a mile further on the river took a bend and swept against a rampart of huge rocks flanked by a krantz, the home of a pair of white-headed eagles, whose harsh screams wakened weird echoes. Attracted to the wild spot, Webster stepped on one of the rocks, which jutted into the swirling water, to examine the krantz, and, noticing that caverns had been worn into the base by the water, he sprang from rock to rock till his way was barred by a smooth wall of slaty rock, which rose considerably above his head. Slinging his rifle over his back, he made use of his seamanship and quickly scaled the slope, slipped down on the other side, manoeuvred a narrow ledge, and stood in the first of a row of caves. There was nothing in this but a half-eaten fish, left evidently, from the signs, by an otter, but on rounding a slippery corner he entered a roomier cave. To his intense surprise, he saw that it had been occupied, and that recently. The walls and roof were blackened with smoke; on the smooth floor was a pile of ash, with the burnt ends of driftwood around, and on a ledge at the back was a mass of dried grass which had evidently served as a couch. He disturbed this with his gun, and dislodged a skin bag made of the entire skin of a monkey, the neck serving as an opening. Stepping to the mouth of the cave, he emptied its contents. These consisted of a copper cylinder, such as Kaffirs use to keep their “passes” clean, a necklet of crocodile teeth, a bracelet of solid ivory, stained with tobacco, and a lump of quartz, rounded at the edges from much friction. There was nothing in the cylinder, and Webster after a curious inspection of the quartz, which was heavy as lead almost, replaced the articles, and returned the bag to the ledge. He entered two other caves without finding anything fresh, and returned to the waggon, where he reported his discovery.“You saw nothing to indicate whether the occupant was a European?” asked Hume.“No; and I took it for granted he must be a black.”“Natives don’t, as a rule, lead solitary lives, and still less could one of them dwell in loneliness by the side of a river, though the place may be the secret retreat of a witch-doctor.”“Perhaps,” suggested Miss Anstrade, “the unknown visitor of last night and this hermit may be one and the same.”“Well,” said Hume, “it is worth looking into; but in the absence of Klaas it would not be wise to leave the waggon.”“I’ll run down and get the bag,” said Webster; “for there is nothing else in the cave from which you could draw conclusions.”He started off, and in half an hour returned with the bag.“This is Kaffir work, certainly,” said Hume; “but,” putting it to his nose, “it has not the native flavour, strong and pungent. This string of teeth threaded on a gut is native, and so is this bracelet. Humph! Quartz. What a weight!” He opened his knife and scraped the surface. “Why, look here; it is half gold.”A streak of shining yellow showed on one side, between two white veins of crystal.“It’s as rich as that piece which my uncle broke from the Golden Rock. I wonder where he found it?”“There’s something more in the bag,” said Miss Anstrade.“It’s the empty cylinder,” said Webster.She slipped her hand in, drew out the little tube and opened it, at the same time uttering a cry of surprise.“Look here!” she said, drawing out a roll of paper.“I swear,” said Webster, with excitement, “it was empty when I found it, for I placed my finger in.”She flattened the paper out, and looked at them with eyes wide-opened, and a flush on her cheek.There, in her hand, lay the missing copy of the map!Each in turn took it, turned it over and over with a blank look.“Well, I’m hanged,” muttered Webster, under his breath. “That fellow must have placed that paper in the tube after I left the cave, and probably watched me the whole time, yet I never caught a glimpse of him.”“He is some half-witted native,” said Hume, after a long pause.“You forget the cry, after your disappearance. That was the voice of a white man who knew you or your uncle, and had learnt the object of our journey.”“True, I had forgotten that. Still, one of my uncle’s men, escaping from the attack made upon his camp, may have taken up his home in the cave, and have lost his mind in the solitude. Such a man might have learnt about the Golden Rock, and he would have picked up a few words of English.”They now heard the lowing of oxen, and presently Klaas appeared with the runaways. Hume quickly counted fifteen.“Well, Klaas, did you search far?”The Gaika stretched his naked arm out and swept it round. “They stood all about, some in one place, some in others, but I whistled to them, and they were joyful to see a man. Three I could not find, but the body of one.”“You have done well, Klaas. What are these things?” and Hume handed over the bag and contents.“Yoh! Kaffir man made these, but a white man uses them.”“A white man?”“Yah, sieur, it is so. It smell white man.”The three looked at each other with uplifted eyebrows, while Klaas turned the necklet over in his hand.“That settles it,” said Hume. “Let us search for the stranger. But, as he may be on the look-out, I will make a circuit to the top of the krantz, while you go towards the base, and leave the bag on some rock that can be seen from above.”This was done. Webster placed the bag on a rock well out in the river, and then retired towards the camp, while Hume watched behind an aloe. For an hour he waited without seeing aught, then descended to the bottom, and himself examined the cave, without, however, finding any fresh evidence. He then returned to the camp.“It is no use,” he said; “we should be wasting valuable time in searching for this mysterious being. If he had some design in taking that map we should be serving his purpose by lingering here. Inspan, Klaas.”The oxen were yoked, and the waggon moved on slowly, Hume going ahead to mark out the road, and Webster, taking the “trek-tow,” or looped rheim to guide the leaders.Before dusk they outspanned on a grassy knoll, and set to work at once with axes to build a fence round. The oxen were driven to the water, allowed to graze a short time, then driven into the enclosure and tied up. Fuel was stacked up in preparation for fires, supper was made and eaten, and then they sat talking about the man of the krantz until the clamorous howling of jackals warned them to be on watch. Miss Anstrade retired to the waggon, the sail was drawn down and two huge fires lit, one on either side of the oxen. Hume crept under, the waggon, and was soon in a deep sleep, while Webster and Klaas, on either side the waggon, kept watch.
“Thank Heaven you are alive!” cried Miss Anstrade, taking his hand in both of hers, and looking with tear-dimmed eyes into his face. “It seemed I was not free here from the curse that falls on those who are dear to me.”
She drew him to a seat, still holding his hand, and Webster, busily engaged in making hot coffee, stopped at times to place his hand affectionately on Frank’s shoulder.
“And where have you been all this fearful night?”
“Tied to a tree. Three times the light from your lantern fell upon me, and twice a hyaena came and stared at me. Ugh, the brute!”
“Tied to a tree? How did it happen, and that voice, did you hear it calling?”
Frank shuddered slightly.
“I heard it,” he said, “and I would have thought it supernatural, so like my uncle’s voice it was, had it been possible for a spirit to knock me down and bind me.”
“Strange,” she murmured. “I also thought it was your uncle calling, though I had never seen or heard him.”
“It struck me to the marrow,” said Webster, “and I fired at the sound out of sheer terror.”
They all sat silent for some time pondering over the mystery.
“It is beyond me,” said Hume wearily. “When I left you last night I expected to find some black, perhaps a woman, from the terror in the sound of her cry, fallen into the river, or caught by a crocodile, and I ran down to the bank, making noise enough to inform anyone of my whereabouts. On reaching the river I stood still, and without the slightest warning was felled to the ground. On recovering consciousness I found myself bound to a tree and gagged. It all happened within the space of ten minutes after leaving the waggon.”
“The cry was a decoy, then?”
“It must have been.”
“You saw no one?”
“No, nor heard the step of my assailant, though at the time I was listening intently.”
“His feet must have been naked, then?”
“Not necessarily, for he may have worn veldschoens, which give no sound. I examined the ground with Klaas before coming up, and we could see no spoor beyond that made by our party.”
“What possible object could he have had,” mused Webster, “since it was not your death he sought? Do you think he mistook you for someone else?”
“Impossible! Whoever did it must have watched us, and he could only have mistaken me for you. No one has a grudge against you.”
“I see it!” cried Miss Anstrade, who had been looking with knitted brows into the fire. “Just before dusk we were talking of the Golden Rock. It was possible for an enemy to creep up undetected and to listen to our talk.”
“Yes,” said Hume, and he felt for the pocket-book that contained the map.
“That is it,” she cried; “they have taken your secret.”
Frank opened the book with trembling fingers, while the others gazed anxiously, leaning forward.
“It is gone,” he said, starting up.
While they looked at each other, with pale faces, Klaas came up.
“Baas,” he said in a low voice. “Baas,” he repeated.
“Well?” said Hume sharply.
“De ossa is gone.”
“What!” shouted Hume, glad for some excuse to give vent to the anger and bitter disappointment that filled him.
“They were stampeded by lions,” said Webster.
“Didn’t I tell you to have them properly tied?”
“Yoh, my baas! But the rheims; someone cut them in the night. Come, see!”
“Good heavens! Can this be true?”
They ran to the trek-tow, and there saw that the tough rheims which secured each ox to the chain had been severed by a sharp instrument.
Hume laughed bitterly.
“Upon my soul,” he said, “you must think me a nice leader.”
“We can walk,” said Miss Anstrade, looking to the distant mountains.
“We could make a raft from the waggon timber, and float down the river,” said Webster.
“It is not the loss of the oxen I fear. We will recover enough of them to continue; it is the ease with which these unknown enemies have succeeded in their plans that troubles me. Now that I have lost the map I believe there does exist a Golden Rock, and their cunning and superior woodcraft will enable them to win it.”
“Nonsense,” she said; “they succeeded because we were off our guard. Now we know what we have to expect, we will oppose our wits to their cunning.”
“It is too late—they have the map—and will have a long start.”
“There was nothing in the map,” said Webster, “that I could not describe with a stick on this patch of sand.”
“Besides,” she said, with spirit, “do you suppose I am going to give up the search after coming all this way?”
“You are right,” replied Hume; “but it does not improve one’s spirit to be fast bound to a tree all night with a handkerchief in your mouth. Map or no map, we must find the Golden Rock.”
“That is better,” she said, with a smile. “Now, then, let us do something.”
Klaas set the example by starting off on the spoor of the oxen, armed with assegai and kerrie. Miss Anstrade sat down to draw, from memory, a facsimile of the lost map; Hume walked on to a small kopje to plan out the route, for there was no trace of road here; while Webster went down to the river to see whether he could decipher any explanation of the night’s mystery on its broad and shining surface. Long he listened to the murmur and ripple of the shallow river against huge round and jagged boulders strewn across its bed, and gazed into the dark beds of shade cast by the wild palmiet, but nowhere was there any trace of human life—not so much even as a piece of driftwood fashioned by man, or a broken beer-bottle, sign throughout the world of the passage of roaming Englishmen. Overhead passed a flight of cranes, their long legs trailing behind like rudders to steer them in their heavy flight, and from their long bills emitting, at intervals, the harsh cry with Nature’s melancholy note, while flocks of “sprews,” the white-bellied African starlings, flew, with noisy clatter, from side to side, and grey monkeys, their black faces rimmed in white, grimaced from waving branches. As he went down the bank, in and out among the thick bushes and clinging thorns, he started a troop of wild buffalo, which crashed off with many an angry snort, and a minute later was brought to a sudden stand by a moaning sound of no great volume, but conveying an undoubted warning. It proceeded from a cluster of rushes, and he moved his head from side to side in an endeavour to see what caused it, succeeding presently in detecting a slight movement made apparently by a small creature like a rat. Smiling at his doubts, he stepped forward, when once again the moaning was repeated, and he stooped down to peer more narrowly into the thicket. Then he saw that the small object was the tuft of a tail, and following the direction, he made the indistinct outline of a large animal crouching flat, and then, with a start, he met the full, fierce gaze of the yellow eyes. Cautiously he stepped back foot by foot until he reached the shelter of a tree, when the rushes shook, and out sprung a full-grown lion, which, after one look at him, trotted off after the buffalo which he had evidently been stalking.
“Phew!” said Webster, his heart thumping, “I suppose Frank would have shot the beggar, but hang me if I wasn’t pleased to see him cut.”
He waited for some time till his heart beat more regularly, then advanced with greater caution, examining each cluster of rushes and dark patch of bushes very carefully before passing. Half a mile further on the river took a bend and swept against a rampart of huge rocks flanked by a krantz, the home of a pair of white-headed eagles, whose harsh screams wakened weird echoes. Attracted to the wild spot, Webster stepped on one of the rocks, which jutted into the swirling water, to examine the krantz, and, noticing that caverns had been worn into the base by the water, he sprang from rock to rock till his way was barred by a smooth wall of slaty rock, which rose considerably above his head. Slinging his rifle over his back, he made use of his seamanship and quickly scaled the slope, slipped down on the other side, manoeuvred a narrow ledge, and stood in the first of a row of caves. There was nothing in this but a half-eaten fish, left evidently, from the signs, by an otter, but on rounding a slippery corner he entered a roomier cave. To his intense surprise, he saw that it had been occupied, and that recently. The walls and roof were blackened with smoke; on the smooth floor was a pile of ash, with the burnt ends of driftwood around, and on a ledge at the back was a mass of dried grass which had evidently served as a couch. He disturbed this with his gun, and dislodged a skin bag made of the entire skin of a monkey, the neck serving as an opening. Stepping to the mouth of the cave, he emptied its contents. These consisted of a copper cylinder, such as Kaffirs use to keep their “passes” clean, a necklet of crocodile teeth, a bracelet of solid ivory, stained with tobacco, and a lump of quartz, rounded at the edges from much friction. There was nothing in the cylinder, and Webster after a curious inspection of the quartz, which was heavy as lead almost, replaced the articles, and returned the bag to the ledge. He entered two other caves without finding anything fresh, and returned to the waggon, where he reported his discovery.
“You saw nothing to indicate whether the occupant was a European?” asked Hume.
“No; and I took it for granted he must be a black.”
“Natives don’t, as a rule, lead solitary lives, and still less could one of them dwell in loneliness by the side of a river, though the place may be the secret retreat of a witch-doctor.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Miss Anstrade, “the unknown visitor of last night and this hermit may be one and the same.”
“Well,” said Hume, “it is worth looking into; but in the absence of Klaas it would not be wise to leave the waggon.”
“I’ll run down and get the bag,” said Webster; “for there is nothing else in the cave from which you could draw conclusions.”
He started off, and in half an hour returned with the bag.
“This is Kaffir work, certainly,” said Hume; “but,” putting it to his nose, “it has not the native flavour, strong and pungent. This string of teeth threaded on a gut is native, and so is this bracelet. Humph! Quartz. What a weight!” He opened his knife and scraped the surface. “Why, look here; it is half gold.”
A streak of shining yellow showed on one side, between two white veins of crystal.
“It’s as rich as that piece which my uncle broke from the Golden Rock. I wonder where he found it?”
“There’s something more in the bag,” said Miss Anstrade.
“It’s the empty cylinder,” said Webster.
She slipped her hand in, drew out the little tube and opened it, at the same time uttering a cry of surprise.
“Look here!” she said, drawing out a roll of paper.
“I swear,” said Webster, with excitement, “it was empty when I found it, for I placed my finger in.”
She flattened the paper out, and looked at them with eyes wide-opened, and a flush on her cheek.
There, in her hand, lay the missing copy of the map!
Each in turn took it, turned it over and over with a blank look.
“Well, I’m hanged,” muttered Webster, under his breath. “That fellow must have placed that paper in the tube after I left the cave, and probably watched me the whole time, yet I never caught a glimpse of him.”
“He is some half-witted native,” said Hume, after a long pause.
“You forget the cry, after your disappearance. That was the voice of a white man who knew you or your uncle, and had learnt the object of our journey.”
“True, I had forgotten that. Still, one of my uncle’s men, escaping from the attack made upon his camp, may have taken up his home in the cave, and have lost his mind in the solitude. Such a man might have learnt about the Golden Rock, and he would have picked up a few words of English.”
They now heard the lowing of oxen, and presently Klaas appeared with the runaways. Hume quickly counted fifteen.
“Well, Klaas, did you search far?”
The Gaika stretched his naked arm out and swept it round. “They stood all about, some in one place, some in others, but I whistled to them, and they were joyful to see a man. Three I could not find, but the body of one.”
“You have done well, Klaas. What are these things?” and Hume handed over the bag and contents.
“Yoh! Kaffir man made these, but a white man uses them.”
“A white man?”
“Yah, sieur, it is so. It smell white man.”
The three looked at each other with uplifted eyebrows, while Klaas turned the necklet over in his hand.
“That settles it,” said Hume. “Let us search for the stranger. But, as he may be on the look-out, I will make a circuit to the top of the krantz, while you go towards the base, and leave the bag on some rock that can be seen from above.”
This was done. Webster placed the bag on a rock well out in the river, and then retired towards the camp, while Hume watched behind an aloe. For an hour he waited without seeing aught, then descended to the bottom, and himself examined the cave, without, however, finding any fresh evidence. He then returned to the camp.
“It is no use,” he said; “we should be wasting valuable time in searching for this mysterious being. If he had some design in taking that map we should be serving his purpose by lingering here. Inspan, Klaas.”
The oxen were yoked, and the waggon moved on slowly, Hume going ahead to mark out the road, and Webster, taking the “trek-tow,” or looped rheim to guide the leaders.
Before dusk they outspanned on a grassy knoll, and set to work at once with axes to build a fence round. The oxen were driven to the water, allowed to graze a short time, then driven into the enclosure and tied up. Fuel was stacked up in preparation for fires, supper was made and eaten, and then they sat talking about the man of the krantz until the clamorous howling of jackals warned them to be on watch. Miss Anstrade retired to the waggon, the sail was drawn down and two huge fires lit, one on either side of the oxen. Hume crept under, the waggon, and was soon in a deep sleep, while Webster and Klaas, on either side the waggon, kept watch.
Chapter Twenty Two.A Startling Visit.To Webster there was nothing unfamiliar in the lonely watches of the night, and the first long silent stretch recalled to him many a fleeting memory of hours spent upon the bridge amid the dark waters, when the mystery of night would close down upon the ship, bringing with it all manner of fancies and haunting superstitions. There was here, in this unpeopled land, the same brooding stillness, the same murmur in the air; and the deep darkness, too, was instinct and alive with the same sense of things unreal. It seemed as though, beyond the flickering circle of ruddy light cast by the crackling fires, there were forms peering in, under cover of the shadows which concealed them, at those within the light, and now and again he would strain his eyes and finger the rifle that rested across his knees.The minutes slipped by quietly, with an occasional sigh from a contented ox; then the long, wailing cry of a jackal rose and fell, to be followed, as though it were a signal, by the deep, hollow growl of a lion. The oxen stirred uneasily, and Klaas came softly up with his red blanket wrapped about him.“Seen anything, Klaas?”“Nix, sieur; but I hear de leeuw.”“Will he jump the fence?”“Ek dink so. The wind blows across, and he will come from that side.”“We will hear him when he springs?”“Neh, baas, he will come over where it is dark, and lie still against the ground, so that we could walk up to him without seeing, though he sees us.”Webster picked up a bull’s-eye lantern, pushed back the slide, and shot a vivid fan-like shaft into the gloom.“Come, then, you hold this, and I will shoot.”They piled fresh wood on the fires, then mounted to the waggon-box, and tried the range of the light over the oxen. At the radiance they turned their heads, and their large eyes shone reflected. Webster pushed back the slide, and they sat waiting—the one with his finger on the trigger of his Express, and the other with the lantern, which sent up a steaming vapour into his face, and a faint reflection shining upon his gleaming eyes.Presently, just beyond the fence on the right, there broke out a booming roar that made the air vibrate, and brought the oxen to their feet. It died away in a hollow growl, and was repeated again and again from different quarters. The oxen bunched together, and Miss Anstrade knocked against the tent, while Hume called out from his lair beneath the waggon.“It’s all right,” said Webster, “the fires are burning, and we are prepared.”Hume crept out, and finding that the back of the waggon was unprotected, he hung a lantern there, and then went back to his couch, with the muzzle of his rifle pointing into the light thus thrown.Klaas called out to his oxen by name to soothe them, and at the sound of his voice the two great red-and-white wheelers laid down with a grunt.For a time there was a spell of stillness, more disquieting than the terrific chorus that had awakened far-off echoes from every roving troop of jackals.“De leeuw talk now,” whispered Klaas.“Talk—what about?”“They tell what they do. The young ones wait over there and shout; the old man creep round on this side, say nothing, and jump over.”“And you think they are settling that plan now?”“Yoh, sieur; they make plan, bymby begin work. See, there!”A second burst of roaring made the ground tremble, and the movement and the vibration in the air seemed to communicate more quickly the terror in the sound. It swelled and fell, and rose again, and at each pause the after-growl came in more threatening and ferocious.“There, baas,” said the Gaika, in a thrilling whisper, dropping his long hand in a fierce grasp on Webster’s arm.“What?” asked Webster, raising his rifle, and looking eagerly to the left.“He jumped just now. Is the baas ready?”“Yes.”The slide was opened, and the brilliant light, released, shot out into the darkness beyond the fires, and, under the steady hand of the Gaika, swept along the fence, throwing out the white scars on the broken branches. It crept back again, and the two men, with eager eyes and every nerve alert, followed the beam for sign of the fierce visitor. Three times the light swept over the ground, and Webster levelled his rifle; but just then the lamp was held still and the Kaffir made a slight noise, while his breathing became quicker.Webster followed the light in vain.“What is it?” he whispered.“Skit, baas, skit!” said the Kaffir.“I can see nothing.”“There, there, sieur!” pointing with his assegai.Suddenly out of the path of the light, near the ground, and apparently detached from any object, glared two balls of yellow fire, and at the same time came a low growl.Guided now by these two luminous orbs, Webster saw a faint outline on the yellow ground.The Kaffir clicked with his tongue impatiently.Webster sighted between the eyes and fired.Upon the report there followed a savage roar, and the next moment the waggon shook to the thud of some great body hurled against it.There was a shriek from the waggon, then a muffled report.“What is it?” shouted Hume, as he crept out from under the waggon. He caught the lantern and rushed round, just as Webster had slipped another cartridge into his rifle. The uproar was terrific. The oxen bellowed as they strained at their rheims, the lions beyond the fence roared, and from beside the waggon there rose a series of blood-curdling growls and coughs. Both guns flashed out together and the assailant laid stretched out. It was a huge yellow-maned lion, still gasping. The Kaffir drove his assegai into the heaving body, and then both Hume and Webster rushed to the waggon.“Are you all right?” they cried.She drew the canvas flap on one side and looked out, with her hair falling forward in heavy coils.“What was it?” she asked.“A wounded lion sprang upon the waggon tent.”“Is anyone hurt?”“No; but the lion is dead.”“I thought something dreadful had happened, and fired as much from terror as anything.”Hume rolled the great body over and examined it.“Your bullet went home, at any rate, Miss Laura, and you have killed your first lion.”“Let me see.” She drew her wraps about her, and was about to descend, when, with a shudder and a nervous laugh, she crept back, dismayed by the darkness.The three men now walked round the enclosure, fired a couple of chance shots, restarted the fires, and returned to their posts. The uproar had subsided, and was succeeded by another spell of oppressive silence, broken at lessening intervals by a vague sound, which grew in volume, but not in distinctness, and before which the other sounds did not revive. As it grew louder it took on a rhythmical beat not unpleasant.“It sounds like a human voice,” said Webster.“Yes, it is a black man chanting, eh, Klaas?”“Eweh, inkose, he sings as he walks;” and so speaking, the Kaffir stretched himself by the fire and drew his blanket over his head.“He evidently fears no danger,” remarked Webster.“I don’t know,” said Hume, and stirred the Gaika; “what manner of man can this be who walks abroad in the night, making sign of his presence to the lions?”“It is the wizard,” replied the Gaika solemnly, “and it is not well to look on him. Even the beasts quit his path;” and once again he pulled the blanket over his head.The man approached rapidly, and now the deep chest notes rolling forth in a rough melody took shape from the mighty volume of sound, and now he was at the fence; and now, with a cry of “Layate,” he leaped the thorns—a wonderful bound—and still chanting, he came up to the waggon, paused a moment at the body of the lion, then stepped to the fire, and stood there with the glow upon his tall form and in his smouldering eyes. A black man he was, of gigantic mould, with a tiger skin knotted by the fore-paws round his neck, and with a mass of bone necklets that clattered at every movement. On his forehead was a large ball of hair, behind which rose two eagle’s feathers, and he carried a bundle of sticks and assegais, while from his shoulder hung a large skin bag.“Who are you, and what is your business?” asked Hume, after looking intently at the stranger.The man shook his head, and his wild, roving eyes, shifting uneasily like those of an animal, glanced from object to object, dwelling at last upon the rolled-up figure of Klaas. Him, presently, he prodded with the butt of an assegai, and grinned till his white teeth gleamed.“Stand up, Klaas,” said Hume sternly, and the Gaika, with a sullen look, rose, and gradually raised his eyes from the feet to the dreaded face. Then, like two fierce and strange dogs meeting, they stood fronting each other—the one with a commanding look, the other with lowering frown and quivering nostrils.The stranger spoke, but the Gaika shook his head in turn.“What does he say?” asked Hume.“He speaks strangely, sieur.”“Is he a witch-doctor?”“He is not of my people, nor of the Zulus, and his toes turn out.”“I wonder if this is our hermit?” said Webster.“Ay, the same thought occurred to me; and the man who could leap over that fence as he did could have no difficulty in knocking me down.”While they were talking the stranger looked at them furtively.Hume cut a piece off a twist of Boer tobacco, and handed it to the man, who took it with a gleam of satisfaction, cut a fragment off with his assegai and put it into his mouth. The Gaika stalked away and crept under the waggon, the stranger stopping his jaws to watch him, until he heard the sigh of a man who lies down to sleep, when he appeared more at ease. Presently he squatted by the fire, spreading his hands before him, and, in a guttural voice, said, “Brandy.”“His vocabulary may be limited,” said Webster dryly; “but it is useful,” and he went to the waggon-box for the stone demijohn in which they carried the Dop brandy.Hume had his eye on the man and saw him shift an assegai to his right hand, whereupon he pulled back the hammer of his rifle with a click that drew a swift, furtive glance upon him.The brandy was poured out and drunk with a resounding smack, and in jubilation he shouted out, after the Kaffir fashion, a few words of praise, and at the noise the oxen stirred.“Yoh!” came a sharp exclamation.“Is that you, Klaas?”“The bush, sieur—the bush; it moves!”“What the devil— Look after that fellow, Jim, while I see into this,” and Hume bolted round the waggon.“Well, Klaas?”The Gaika was not there, but Hume heard him talking to the oxen, and ran forward.“What is it?”“Men come in to cut rheims again, and take away the bush fence.”“Where are they?” said Hume, throwing up his rifle.“They run when they see me. That man by the fire no good. So I went by the waggon and watch—bymby, when he drink and cry out one word, he shout in Zulu,baleka(quick). So I leave the waggon.”“Hold that fellow!” shouted Hume, but there came a stifled cry from Webster, and when he got round the man had gone, and Jim was rubbing his eyes.“Hang the swab,” he said; “he threw a handful of dust in my eyes when I attempted to seize him, and bounded away. What new devilment’s afoot?”“That fellow was in league with someone, and another attempt has been made to stampede the oxen. They beat us at every turn.”“You are very noisy out there,” said a voice from the waggon.“We have been entertaining a guest, and he has just left us,” said Hume, with a wry face.“A guest in this place, and at such an hour! You should have given me an opportunity of sharing the pleasure.”“We did not wish to disturb you.”A close inspection was made of the fence, and three large branches, which had been removed, were replaced. Then the three men, each taking up a different post, kept watch again until the dawn.
To Webster there was nothing unfamiliar in the lonely watches of the night, and the first long silent stretch recalled to him many a fleeting memory of hours spent upon the bridge amid the dark waters, when the mystery of night would close down upon the ship, bringing with it all manner of fancies and haunting superstitions. There was here, in this unpeopled land, the same brooding stillness, the same murmur in the air; and the deep darkness, too, was instinct and alive with the same sense of things unreal. It seemed as though, beyond the flickering circle of ruddy light cast by the crackling fires, there were forms peering in, under cover of the shadows which concealed them, at those within the light, and now and again he would strain his eyes and finger the rifle that rested across his knees.
The minutes slipped by quietly, with an occasional sigh from a contented ox; then the long, wailing cry of a jackal rose and fell, to be followed, as though it were a signal, by the deep, hollow growl of a lion. The oxen stirred uneasily, and Klaas came softly up with his red blanket wrapped about him.
“Seen anything, Klaas?”
“Nix, sieur; but I hear de leeuw.”
“Will he jump the fence?”
“Ek dink so. The wind blows across, and he will come from that side.”
“We will hear him when he springs?”
“Neh, baas, he will come over where it is dark, and lie still against the ground, so that we could walk up to him without seeing, though he sees us.”
Webster picked up a bull’s-eye lantern, pushed back the slide, and shot a vivid fan-like shaft into the gloom.
“Come, then, you hold this, and I will shoot.”
They piled fresh wood on the fires, then mounted to the waggon-box, and tried the range of the light over the oxen. At the radiance they turned their heads, and their large eyes shone reflected. Webster pushed back the slide, and they sat waiting—the one with his finger on the trigger of his Express, and the other with the lantern, which sent up a steaming vapour into his face, and a faint reflection shining upon his gleaming eyes.
Presently, just beyond the fence on the right, there broke out a booming roar that made the air vibrate, and brought the oxen to their feet. It died away in a hollow growl, and was repeated again and again from different quarters. The oxen bunched together, and Miss Anstrade knocked against the tent, while Hume called out from his lair beneath the waggon.
“It’s all right,” said Webster, “the fires are burning, and we are prepared.”
Hume crept out, and finding that the back of the waggon was unprotected, he hung a lantern there, and then went back to his couch, with the muzzle of his rifle pointing into the light thus thrown.
Klaas called out to his oxen by name to soothe them, and at the sound of his voice the two great red-and-white wheelers laid down with a grunt.
For a time there was a spell of stillness, more disquieting than the terrific chorus that had awakened far-off echoes from every roving troop of jackals.
“De leeuw talk now,” whispered Klaas.
“Talk—what about?”
“They tell what they do. The young ones wait over there and shout; the old man creep round on this side, say nothing, and jump over.”
“And you think they are settling that plan now?”
“Yoh, sieur; they make plan, bymby begin work. See, there!”
A second burst of roaring made the ground tremble, and the movement and the vibration in the air seemed to communicate more quickly the terror in the sound. It swelled and fell, and rose again, and at each pause the after-growl came in more threatening and ferocious.
“There, baas,” said the Gaika, in a thrilling whisper, dropping his long hand in a fierce grasp on Webster’s arm.
“What?” asked Webster, raising his rifle, and looking eagerly to the left.
“He jumped just now. Is the baas ready?”
“Yes.”
The slide was opened, and the brilliant light, released, shot out into the darkness beyond the fires, and, under the steady hand of the Gaika, swept along the fence, throwing out the white scars on the broken branches. It crept back again, and the two men, with eager eyes and every nerve alert, followed the beam for sign of the fierce visitor. Three times the light swept over the ground, and Webster levelled his rifle; but just then the lamp was held still and the Kaffir made a slight noise, while his breathing became quicker.
Webster followed the light in vain.
“What is it?” he whispered.
“Skit, baas, skit!” said the Kaffir.
“I can see nothing.”
“There, there, sieur!” pointing with his assegai.
Suddenly out of the path of the light, near the ground, and apparently detached from any object, glared two balls of yellow fire, and at the same time came a low growl.
Guided now by these two luminous orbs, Webster saw a faint outline on the yellow ground.
The Kaffir clicked with his tongue impatiently.
Webster sighted between the eyes and fired.
Upon the report there followed a savage roar, and the next moment the waggon shook to the thud of some great body hurled against it.
There was a shriek from the waggon, then a muffled report.
“What is it?” shouted Hume, as he crept out from under the waggon. He caught the lantern and rushed round, just as Webster had slipped another cartridge into his rifle. The uproar was terrific. The oxen bellowed as they strained at their rheims, the lions beyond the fence roared, and from beside the waggon there rose a series of blood-curdling growls and coughs. Both guns flashed out together and the assailant laid stretched out. It was a huge yellow-maned lion, still gasping. The Kaffir drove his assegai into the heaving body, and then both Hume and Webster rushed to the waggon.
“Are you all right?” they cried.
She drew the canvas flap on one side and looked out, with her hair falling forward in heavy coils.
“What was it?” she asked.
“A wounded lion sprang upon the waggon tent.”
“Is anyone hurt?”
“No; but the lion is dead.”
“I thought something dreadful had happened, and fired as much from terror as anything.”
Hume rolled the great body over and examined it.
“Your bullet went home, at any rate, Miss Laura, and you have killed your first lion.”
“Let me see.” She drew her wraps about her, and was about to descend, when, with a shudder and a nervous laugh, she crept back, dismayed by the darkness.
The three men now walked round the enclosure, fired a couple of chance shots, restarted the fires, and returned to their posts. The uproar had subsided, and was succeeded by another spell of oppressive silence, broken at lessening intervals by a vague sound, which grew in volume, but not in distinctness, and before which the other sounds did not revive. As it grew louder it took on a rhythmical beat not unpleasant.
“It sounds like a human voice,” said Webster.
“Yes, it is a black man chanting, eh, Klaas?”
“Eweh, inkose, he sings as he walks;” and so speaking, the Kaffir stretched himself by the fire and drew his blanket over his head.
“He evidently fears no danger,” remarked Webster.
“I don’t know,” said Hume, and stirred the Gaika; “what manner of man can this be who walks abroad in the night, making sign of his presence to the lions?”
“It is the wizard,” replied the Gaika solemnly, “and it is not well to look on him. Even the beasts quit his path;” and once again he pulled the blanket over his head.
The man approached rapidly, and now the deep chest notes rolling forth in a rough melody took shape from the mighty volume of sound, and now he was at the fence; and now, with a cry of “Layate,” he leaped the thorns—a wonderful bound—and still chanting, he came up to the waggon, paused a moment at the body of the lion, then stepped to the fire, and stood there with the glow upon his tall form and in his smouldering eyes. A black man he was, of gigantic mould, with a tiger skin knotted by the fore-paws round his neck, and with a mass of bone necklets that clattered at every movement. On his forehead was a large ball of hair, behind which rose two eagle’s feathers, and he carried a bundle of sticks and assegais, while from his shoulder hung a large skin bag.
“Who are you, and what is your business?” asked Hume, after looking intently at the stranger.
The man shook his head, and his wild, roving eyes, shifting uneasily like those of an animal, glanced from object to object, dwelling at last upon the rolled-up figure of Klaas. Him, presently, he prodded with the butt of an assegai, and grinned till his white teeth gleamed.
“Stand up, Klaas,” said Hume sternly, and the Gaika, with a sullen look, rose, and gradually raised his eyes from the feet to the dreaded face. Then, like two fierce and strange dogs meeting, they stood fronting each other—the one with a commanding look, the other with lowering frown and quivering nostrils.
The stranger spoke, but the Gaika shook his head in turn.
“What does he say?” asked Hume.
“He speaks strangely, sieur.”
“Is he a witch-doctor?”
“He is not of my people, nor of the Zulus, and his toes turn out.”
“I wonder if this is our hermit?” said Webster.
“Ay, the same thought occurred to me; and the man who could leap over that fence as he did could have no difficulty in knocking me down.”
While they were talking the stranger looked at them furtively.
Hume cut a piece off a twist of Boer tobacco, and handed it to the man, who took it with a gleam of satisfaction, cut a fragment off with his assegai and put it into his mouth. The Gaika stalked away and crept under the waggon, the stranger stopping his jaws to watch him, until he heard the sigh of a man who lies down to sleep, when he appeared more at ease. Presently he squatted by the fire, spreading his hands before him, and, in a guttural voice, said, “Brandy.”
“His vocabulary may be limited,” said Webster dryly; “but it is useful,” and he went to the waggon-box for the stone demijohn in which they carried the Dop brandy.
Hume had his eye on the man and saw him shift an assegai to his right hand, whereupon he pulled back the hammer of his rifle with a click that drew a swift, furtive glance upon him.
The brandy was poured out and drunk with a resounding smack, and in jubilation he shouted out, after the Kaffir fashion, a few words of praise, and at the noise the oxen stirred.
“Yoh!” came a sharp exclamation.
“Is that you, Klaas?”
“The bush, sieur—the bush; it moves!”
“What the devil— Look after that fellow, Jim, while I see into this,” and Hume bolted round the waggon.
“Well, Klaas?”
The Gaika was not there, but Hume heard him talking to the oxen, and ran forward.
“What is it?”
“Men come in to cut rheims again, and take away the bush fence.”
“Where are they?” said Hume, throwing up his rifle.
“They run when they see me. That man by the fire no good. So I went by the waggon and watch—bymby, when he drink and cry out one word, he shout in Zulu,baleka(quick). So I leave the waggon.”
“Hold that fellow!” shouted Hume, but there came a stifled cry from Webster, and when he got round the man had gone, and Jim was rubbing his eyes.
“Hang the swab,” he said; “he threw a handful of dust in my eyes when I attempted to seize him, and bounded away. What new devilment’s afoot?”
“That fellow was in league with someone, and another attempt has been made to stampede the oxen. They beat us at every turn.”
“You are very noisy out there,” said a voice from the waggon.
“We have been entertaining a guest, and he has just left us,” said Hume, with a wry face.
“A guest in this place, and at such an hour! You should have given me an opportunity of sharing the pleasure.”
“We did not wish to disturb you.”
A close inspection was made of the fence, and three large branches, which had been removed, were replaced. Then the three men, each taking up a different post, kept watch again until the dawn.