Chapter Five.Anstey’s Store.“Here! Hi! you two Johnny Raws! What the devil are you doing there, tramping down all my green mealies? Get out of that, will you?” And a volley of curses emphasised the injunction, as the speaker hurried up to the scene of the damage.The latter was a good-sized mealie patch adjoining the roadside, through whose battered and broken-down fence had plunged a horse—a stubborn and refractory horse withal, whose shies and plunges sorely tried the equilibrium of his unskilled rider. That rider was no other than our friend Harry Maitland. Gerard, who was a better horseman, had kept his steed in the road, and was shouting encouragement to his comrade, who, hot and fagged with a long ride on a somewhat rough animal, now found it all he could do to keep his seat.The aggrieved proprietor’s voice rose to a perfect yell of fury as he gained the spot and noted the havoc wrought. Mealie stalks were snapping off short, one after the other, and a broad, trampled, and broken patch, as if the place had been roughly mown, marked the passage of the horse. Mad with rage, he picked up a stone.“Here, drop that, will you?” cried Gerard, warningly.Too late. The stone whizzed, and striking the horse on the hind quarters, caused that quadruped to kick out wildly. Harry was deposited in a face among the broken stalks, while his steed, thus relieved, tore away snorting and kicking—crashing through the standing crop with a diabolical indifference to the feelings of its owner which made the latter foam again.“Come out of that!” he raved, as poor Harry began ruefully and rather gingerly to pick himself up. “Come out of it. I’ll have twenty pound out of you for this little bit of fun. But first of all I’m going to give you the biggest licking you ever had in your life, you spick-and-span popinjay masher!”“We’ll see about that part of the business,” said Gerard, who, seeing the hostile turn of affairs, had dismounted and hitched his bridle to a convenient rail. “If there’s going to be any fighting, it’ll have to be done fair, you understand.”“What the blazes have you got to say to it anyhow?” cried the man, turning to Gerard, but with something of the light of battle gone out of his unprepossessing countenance as he took in the well-knit frame and determined aspect of his younger opponent.“Just this,” said Gerard. “My chum there’s shaken by his fall, and I doubt if he’s much good with his fists or a match for you. So if there’s any licking to be done, just start here. See?”But the man apparently did not see. He hesitated, staring at the speaker, his features working with rage. He was a hard-looking customer of about forty, with shifty eyes and a shaggy sandy beard. His raiment withal was slovenly, consisting of moleskin trousers none too clean, a collarless flannel shirt, also none too clean, and a slouch hat.“Why don’t you fence your confounded mealie-field, or whatever you call it?” said Gerard, angrily, for although a good-tempered fellow he had all the average young Englishman’s objection to being bullied or crowed over. “You deserve all that’s happened for keeping a place like that practically unfenced, for one can’t call that broken-down thing a fence. And right by the roadside, too! Shouldn’t wonder if it was left that way on purpose.”The man yelled out a fresh torrent of blasphemy. The last remark had all-unwittingly hit the right nail on the head. That mealie patch was a source of revenue to its owner beyond the mere value of its crop. But he hesitated to come to close quarters.“Fence or no fence,” he shouted, “I’m going to have twenty pound out of that paper-collared, monkey-headed son of a bandbox. His brute of a horse has done more than twice that amount of damage. So shell out, Shiny-boots!”Harry, to whom this remark was addressed, though, as his comrade had said, somewhat shaken by his fall, was quite alive to the situation. He realised what a tower of strength lay in Gerard’s thews and sinews, and was not at all unwilling that his comrade should fight his battles for him. So he answered with a spirit born of that confidence.“Keep your confounded cheek to yourself, you dirty-looking clodhopper. Twenty pounds! Why, I’ll summon you for shying stones at me and starting off my horse. And if he’s lost you’ll have to pay for him.”“Look here,” said Gerard, “if you think you’ve any claim upon us, we are staying in Maritzburg, at the Imperial. I’ll give you our names and addresses, and you can do what you like. But we are not going to stick fooling around here all day.”“Oh, you’re not, eh? We’ll soon see about that.” And turning, he began bawling out something in a language they did not understand.A house stood back from the road. This building they had at first hardly noticed. Now, from around it, a swarm of natives were pouring, about a dozen of whom, leaving the rest, came running down to the scene of the dispute.“This is getting serious,” said Gerard to himself. “I’m afraid we’re in for a ripe old row.”The natives had surrounded our two friends. They were mostly well-set-up, stalwart fellows, some clad in European clothes, others wearing only themútya, a sort of apron which hangs from the loins before and behind. All carried sticks.The white man was haranguing them vehemently in their own tongue—in fact, binding them to his interests by promises of grog and tobacco. Gerard cast an eager glance up and down the long riband of dusty road, over the shimmering expanse of sun-bakedveldt. But in vain. No help need be looked for from outside. He resolved to make one more appeal to reason.“Look here,” he began.But the other stopped him short.“Shut up. We don’t want any moreindaba. Are you going to fork out or are you not? because, if not, we are going to take your horse and yourselves too. There are enough of us, you see.”“Possibly there are,” said Gerard. “But before you attempt anything foolish, just hear what I’ve got to say. My name’s Ridgeley, and—”“Eh? What!” The other was staring at him open-mouthed now. “What did you say your name was?”“Ridgeley—Gerard Ridgeley,” was the reply, in some astonishment at the sadden transition in the other’s demeanour.“Why on earth didn’t you say so before?”“Well, I tried to, but you wouldn’t let me get in a word edgeways. Isn’t there a Mr Anstey living somewhere about here? Umjilo is the name of his place, I believe.”“Quite right, Gerard, quite right. There is.I’mMr Anstey, and yonder’s Umjilo”—pointing to the house before referred to. “And so you’re young Ridgeley! Well, well!”Gerard started and stared, then stared again. His countenance exhibited surprise, relief, amazement, but no satisfaction; relief at this fortunate termination of their difference, yet a profound sense of disappointment. That this seedy, disreputable-looking rowdy should turn out to be the relative of whom he was in search was something of a shock, and that such a specimen as this should have it in its power to advance his prospects in life seemed incredible. His hopes sank to zero.“Lord, now, to think of that!” went on Anstey. “And to think how near we came to punching each other’s heads! You’d never have dreamt it, eh, Gerard? I’m a bit of a rough chap, I’m afraid. Years of this cursed country and climate are apt to touch up a man’s temper and liver; but I mean no harm—bless you, no. We haven’t shaken hands yet.”Gerard reddened, as he came to himself, and held out his hand eagerly. Young as he was, his natural acumen had detected a false ring underlying the assumed heartiness of the other’s speech, and he feared by his manner to show it.“Now, introduce your friend. Ah, very sorry, sir, we should have had any difference of opinion. Shake hands and forget all about it. I’ll soon have your horse brought back. And now, come round to the house and have some dinner. It’s a bit rough, maybe, but very much at your service.”The almost deferential tone of this apology completely availed to salve Harry Maitland’s wounded dignity, and he began to see in his whilom foe, but now prospective host, an uncommonly sensible fellow, shrewd enough to appreciate to a hair his own sense of self-importance. The natives, with many surprised ejaculations over this unlooked-for turn events had taken, dispersed by twos and threes, not, however, before Anstey had despatched a couple of them to hunt up the runaway steed.“Come on up to the house,” he went on. “I dare say you’ve learnt not to expect much by this time—not much in the way of comfort, that is. When did you land?”“Only a few days ago,” answered Gerard. “We came straight on here at once. Travelled up to Maritzburg in a waggon, chartered a horse apiece, and came out to find you.”“Travelled up in a waggon, did you say? Whose waggon?”“John Dawes’s. A rattling good chap. Do you know him?”“Used to. But, between you and me, Gerard, he’s not really much of a chap. Did he—er—seem to know me?”The covert anxiety of the tone brought back to Gerard’s mind the queer expression which the mention of his relative had called up to the transport-rider’s face. Still it was possible that the two men had but quarrelled. At the same time, do what he would he could not quite overcome a growing aversion to Anstey. This was hardly promising for their future relationship.“This is my crib,” said Anstey, as they approached the house. “The store’s at the back. We’ll go round and look at it presently. Come in; come in.”The house was a rough, square, one-storeyed building, roofed over with corrugated iron. A lowstoepran round the front of it, and the door opened into the sitting-room direct, without the intervention of any entrance hall. The floor was of hard clay covered with matting, and the furniture of the very plainest. Accommodation seemed strictly limited, for besides the room which did duty as the proprietor’s bedroom there was only one other, and it was half full of lumber of every description. The whole of the back part of the house was used for the trading store, and from this came a foetid and pungent whiff, mingled with the deep bass hum of native voices.While they dined—on a baked shoulder of mutton, with pumpkin and sweet potatoes—Anstey questioned his young guests somewhat profusely as to their plans and prospects. Gerard, whose rising aversion had engendered in him suspicions of which he was more than half ashamed, fancied he detected a slight change of manner on his host’s part, as he frankly avowed his own utter lack of prospects or means, and a corresponding increase of cordiality towards Harry Maitland, who was not prone to underrate himself or his possessions.“I remember your mother perfectly well, Gerard,” said Anstey. “But I never saw your father. So they shipped you off to shift for yourself, eh? Well, we must see what can be done for you. And what are your plans, Maitland?”“Oh, I must first go round and look up a lot of people I’ve got introductions to,” was the airy reply. “Nothing like looking around a bit before making up one’s mind, eh?”“Quite right, quite right,” nodded their host approvingly, inking another glass of grog, which, by the way, was the sixth he had taken since he came in. Then he proposed they should light their pipes and stroll round and look in at the store.The latter was a long low room, with a counter running through it. This, as also the shelves lining the walls, was covered with goods—blankets and rugs, canisters of coffee and sugar, brass wire and bangles and every species of native “track,” biscuit and paraffin tins. Strings of beads of every conceivable hue, overcoats, and flannel shirts, and moleskin trousers hung from pegs, and clusters ofreims, or raw-hide thongs—for rope is but little used in South Africa—in fact, half a hundred varieties of the genus “notion” for supplying the needs of customers, native or white.The room was pretty full of tobacco smoke and natives, who suspended their conversation and nudged each other as they recognised the two young strangers against whom their aid had been invoked for hostile purposes, but who were now hand in glove with the proprietor behind the counter. A lanky youth in shirt-sleeves, with a mud-coloured, wispy face, was presiding over the transactions.“Well, Smith, how’s ‘biz’?” said Anstey. The wispy youth shrugged his shoulders and growled some inarticulate reply in monosyllable. Then, on being introduced to the new-comers, he extended a limp paw to each, and returned to his former occupation of measuring out roll tobacco to a native, always with the same wooden and vacant expression.“Well, how do you think you’d like storekeeping?” said Anstey, as he went through the performance which he jocosely termed “showing them round the place,” though, apart from a tumble-down stable and the historic mealie-field before described, there was no “place” to show them round.Gerard, the recollection fresh in his mind of the dismal room and foetid atmosphere, and the generally depressing aspect of all connected therewith, replied, with an inward shudder, that he hardly thought he would care about it. He would much prefer farming. This was greeted as a huge joke.“Pooh!” said Anstey. “Farming is a beggar’s trade compared with this. Why, bless my soul, a farmer’s a slave to all the seasons, to every shower of rain, or the want of it, even if his place and stock ain’t mortgaged up to the hilt. Again, the diseases among cattle are legion. Now, in a neat little store like this of mine, you can just coin money hand over fist.”His listeners thought this last statement hardly borne out by the aspect of the surroundings in general. The other, quick to see this, went on.“Ah, you think it don’t look much like it, eh? Well, I don’t wonder. But, you see, it isn’t worth my while bothering about tinkering up this place. Here it doesn’t matter how one lives. But I’m just waiting till I’ve made my pile, and then—” And the concluding blank left scope for the most magnificent, if somewhat vague possibilities.They returned indoors, and Anstey made the heat and the walk an excuse for another glass of grog. Then a native knocked at the door to announce that the missing steed had been found and brought back. Harry suggested that it was time to start on their return ride to Maritzburg. But of this their host would not hear.“Stay the night, anyhow,” he said. “That is, if you don’t mind roughing it. I can knock you up a shakedown of some sort. I meant to have had the spare room arranged when I first heard you were coming out, Gerard. But I dare say you can manage without white sheets.”Gerard, of course, declared that, if anything, he rather preferred it. That point settled, Anstey became even more the effusively genial host; but, with all his desire to be entertaining, both were sensible of a want of something—a difference between the perfectly frank and self-possessed geniality of John Dawes, for instance. They were joined at supper by the wispy-faced youth, who came straight in from his duties in the store—now closed for the night—without going through any such superfluous ceremony as washing. Afterwards, when the talk was in full swing, Anstey would constantly appeal to his subordinate for confirmation of his statements or anecdotes—“Isn’t that so, Smith?” “Didn’t I, Smith?” and so forth; whereupon the latter would remove his pipe from his mouth, and spit and remark, “Ja, that’s so.” Which was the full extent of his conversation.
“Here! Hi! you two Johnny Raws! What the devil are you doing there, tramping down all my green mealies? Get out of that, will you?” And a volley of curses emphasised the injunction, as the speaker hurried up to the scene of the damage.
The latter was a good-sized mealie patch adjoining the roadside, through whose battered and broken-down fence had plunged a horse—a stubborn and refractory horse withal, whose shies and plunges sorely tried the equilibrium of his unskilled rider. That rider was no other than our friend Harry Maitland. Gerard, who was a better horseman, had kept his steed in the road, and was shouting encouragement to his comrade, who, hot and fagged with a long ride on a somewhat rough animal, now found it all he could do to keep his seat.
The aggrieved proprietor’s voice rose to a perfect yell of fury as he gained the spot and noted the havoc wrought. Mealie stalks were snapping off short, one after the other, and a broad, trampled, and broken patch, as if the place had been roughly mown, marked the passage of the horse. Mad with rage, he picked up a stone.
“Here, drop that, will you?” cried Gerard, warningly.
Too late. The stone whizzed, and striking the horse on the hind quarters, caused that quadruped to kick out wildly. Harry was deposited in a face among the broken stalks, while his steed, thus relieved, tore away snorting and kicking—crashing through the standing crop with a diabolical indifference to the feelings of its owner which made the latter foam again.
“Come out of that!” he raved, as poor Harry began ruefully and rather gingerly to pick himself up. “Come out of it. I’ll have twenty pound out of you for this little bit of fun. But first of all I’m going to give you the biggest licking you ever had in your life, you spick-and-span popinjay masher!”
“We’ll see about that part of the business,” said Gerard, who, seeing the hostile turn of affairs, had dismounted and hitched his bridle to a convenient rail. “If there’s going to be any fighting, it’ll have to be done fair, you understand.”
“What the blazes have you got to say to it anyhow?” cried the man, turning to Gerard, but with something of the light of battle gone out of his unprepossessing countenance as he took in the well-knit frame and determined aspect of his younger opponent.
“Just this,” said Gerard. “My chum there’s shaken by his fall, and I doubt if he’s much good with his fists or a match for you. So if there’s any licking to be done, just start here. See?”
But the man apparently did not see. He hesitated, staring at the speaker, his features working with rage. He was a hard-looking customer of about forty, with shifty eyes and a shaggy sandy beard. His raiment withal was slovenly, consisting of moleskin trousers none too clean, a collarless flannel shirt, also none too clean, and a slouch hat.
“Why don’t you fence your confounded mealie-field, or whatever you call it?” said Gerard, angrily, for although a good-tempered fellow he had all the average young Englishman’s objection to being bullied or crowed over. “You deserve all that’s happened for keeping a place like that practically unfenced, for one can’t call that broken-down thing a fence. And right by the roadside, too! Shouldn’t wonder if it was left that way on purpose.”
The man yelled out a fresh torrent of blasphemy. The last remark had all-unwittingly hit the right nail on the head. That mealie patch was a source of revenue to its owner beyond the mere value of its crop. But he hesitated to come to close quarters.
“Fence or no fence,” he shouted, “I’m going to have twenty pound out of that paper-collared, monkey-headed son of a bandbox. His brute of a horse has done more than twice that amount of damage. So shell out, Shiny-boots!”
Harry, to whom this remark was addressed, though, as his comrade had said, somewhat shaken by his fall, was quite alive to the situation. He realised what a tower of strength lay in Gerard’s thews and sinews, and was not at all unwilling that his comrade should fight his battles for him. So he answered with a spirit born of that confidence.
“Keep your confounded cheek to yourself, you dirty-looking clodhopper. Twenty pounds! Why, I’ll summon you for shying stones at me and starting off my horse. And if he’s lost you’ll have to pay for him.”
“Look here,” said Gerard, “if you think you’ve any claim upon us, we are staying in Maritzburg, at the Imperial. I’ll give you our names and addresses, and you can do what you like. But we are not going to stick fooling around here all day.”
“Oh, you’re not, eh? We’ll soon see about that.” And turning, he began bawling out something in a language they did not understand.
A house stood back from the road. This building they had at first hardly noticed. Now, from around it, a swarm of natives were pouring, about a dozen of whom, leaving the rest, came running down to the scene of the dispute.
“This is getting serious,” said Gerard to himself. “I’m afraid we’re in for a ripe old row.”
The natives had surrounded our two friends. They were mostly well-set-up, stalwart fellows, some clad in European clothes, others wearing only themútya, a sort of apron which hangs from the loins before and behind. All carried sticks.
The white man was haranguing them vehemently in their own tongue—in fact, binding them to his interests by promises of grog and tobacco. Gerard cast an eager glance up and down the long riband of dusty road, over the shimmering expanse of sun-bakedveldt. But in vain. No help need be looked for from outside. He resolved to make one more appeal to reason.
“Look here,” he began.
But the other stopped him short.
“Shut up. We don’t want any moreindaba. Are you going to fork out or are you not? because, if not, we are going to take your horse and yourselves too. There are enough of us, you see.”
“Possibly there are,” said Gerard. “But before you attempt anything foolish, just hear what I’ve got to say. My name’s Ridgeley, and—”
“Eh? What!” The other was staring at him open-mouthed now. “What did you say your name was?”
“Ridgeley—Gerard Ridgeley,” was the reply, in some astonishment at the sadden transition in the other’s demeanour.
“Why on earth didn’t you say so before?”
“Well, I tried to, but you wouldn’t let me get in a word edgeways. Isn’t there a Mr Anstey living somewhere about here? Umjilo is the name of his place, I believe.”
“Quite right, Gerard, quite right. There is.I’mMr Anstey, and yonder’s Umjilo”—pointing to the house before referred to. “And so you’re young Ridgeley! Well, well!”
Gerard started and stared, then stared again. His countenance exhibited surprise, relief, amazement, but no satisfaction; relief at this fortunate termination of their difference, yet a profound sense of disappointment. That this seedy, disreputable-looking rowdy should turn out to be the relative of whom he was in search was something of a shock, and that such a specimen as this should have it in its power to advance his prospects in life seemed incredible. His hopes sank to zero.
“Lord, now, to think of that!” went on Anstey. “And to think how near we came to punching each other’s heads! You’d never have dreamt it, eh, Gerard? I’m a bit of a rough chap, I’m afraid. Years of this cursed country and climate are apt to touch up a man’s temper and liver; but I mean no harm—bless you, no. We haven’t shaken hands yet.”
Gerard reddened, as he came to himself, and held out his hand eagerly. Young as he was, his natural acumen had detected a false ring underlying the assumed heartiness of the other’s speech, and he feared by his manner to show it.
“Now, introduce your friend. Ah, very sorry, sir, we should have had any difference of opinion. Shake hands and forget all about it. I’ll soon have your horse brought back. And now, come round to the house and have some dinner. It’s a bit rough, maybe, but very much at your service.”
The almost deferential tone of this apology completely availed to salve Harry Maitland’s wounded dignity, and he began to see in his whilom foe, but now prospective host, an uncommonly sensible fellow, shrewd enough to appreciate to a hair his own sense of self-importance. The natives, with many surprised ejaculations over this unlooked-for turn events had taken, dispersed by twos and threes, not, however, before Anstey had despatched a couple of them to hunt up the runaway steed.
“Come on up to the house,” he went on. “I dare say you’ve learnt not to expect much by this time—not much in the way of comfort, that is. When did you land?”
“Only a few days ago,” answered Gerard. “We came straight on here at once. Travelled up to Maritzburg in a waggon, chartered a horse apiece, and came out to find you.”
“Travelled up in a waggon, did you say? Whose waggon?”
“John Dawes’s. A rattling good chap. Do you know him?”
“Used to. But, between you and me, Gerard, he’s not really much of a chap. Did he—er—seem to know me?”
The covert anxiety of the tone brought back to Gerard’s mind the queer expression which the mention of his relative had called up to the transport-rider’s face. Still it was possible that the two men had but quarrelled. At the same time, do what he would he could not quite overcome a growing aversion to Anstey. This was hardly promising for their future relationship.
“This is my crib,” said Anstey, as they approached the house. “The store’s at the back. We’ll go round and look at it presently. Come in; come in.”
The house was a rough, square, one-storeyed building, roofed over with corrugated iron. A lowstoepran round the front of it, and the door opened into the sitting-room direct, without the intervention of any entrance hall. The floor was of hard clay covered with matting, and the furniture of the very plainest. Accommodation seemed strictly limited, for besides the room which did duty as the proprietor’s bedroom there was only one other, and it was half full of lumber of every description. The whole of the back part of the house was used for the trading store, and from this came a foetid and pungent whiff, mingled with the deep bass hum of native voices.
While they dined—on a baked shoulder of mutton, with pumpkin and sweet potatoes—Anstey questioned his young guests somewhat profusely as to their plans and prospects. Gerard, whose rising aversion had engendered in him suspicions of which he was more than half ashamed, fancied he detected a slight change of manner on his host’s part, as he frankly avowed his own utter lack of prospects or means, and a corresponding increase of cordiality towards Harry Maitland, who was not prone to underrate himself or his possessions.
“I remember your mother perfectly well, Gerard,” said Anstey. “But I never saw your father. So they shipped you off to shift for yourself, eh? Well, we must see what can be done for you. And what are your plans, Maitland?”
“Oh, I must first go round and look up a lot of people I’ve got introductions to,” was the airy reply. “Nothing like looking around a bit before making up one’s mind, eh?”
“Quite right, quite right,” nodded their host approvingly, inking another glass of grog, which, by the way, was the sixth he had taken since he came in. Then he proposed they should light their pipes and stroll round and look in at the store.
The latter was a long low room, with a counter running through it. This, as also the shelves lining the walls, was covered with goods—blankets and rugs, canisters of coffee and sugar, brass wire and bangles and every species of native “track,” biscuit and paraffin tins. Strings of beads of every conceivable hue, overcoats, and flannel shirts, and moleskin trousers hung from pegs, and clusters ofreims, or raw-hide thongs—for rope is but little used in South Africa—in fact, half a hundred varieties of the genus “notion” for supplying the needs of customers, native or white.
The room was pretty full of tobacco smoke and natives, who suspended their conversation and nudged each other as they recognised the two young strangers against whom their aid had been invoked for hostile purposes, but who were now hand in glove with the proprietor behind the counter. A lanky youth in shirt-sleeves, with a mud-coloured, wispy face, was presiding over the transactions.
“Well, Smith, how’s ‘biz’?” said Anstey. The wispy youth shrugged his shoulders and growled some inarticulate reply in monosyllable. Then, on being introduced to the new-comers, he extended a limp paw to each, and returned to his former occupation of measuring out roll tobacco to a native, always with the same wooden and vacant expression.
“Well, how do you think you’d like storekeeping?” said Anstey, as he went through the performance which he jocosely termed “showing them round the place,” though, apart from a tumble-down stable and the historic mealie-field before described, there was no “place” to show them round.
Gerard, the recollection fresh in his mind of the dismal room and foetid atmosphere, and the generally depressing aspect of all connected therewith, replied, with an inward shudder, that he hardly thought he would care about it. He would much prefer farming. This was greeted as a huge joke.
“Pooh!” said Anstey. “Farming is a beggar’s trade compared with this. Why, bless my soul, a farmer’s a slave to all the seasons, to every shower of rain, or the want of it, even if his place and stock ain’t mortgaged up to the hilt. Again, the diseases among cattle are legion. Now, in a neat little store like this of mine, you can just coin money hand over fist.”
His listeners thought this last statement hardly borne out by the aspect of the surroundings in general. The other, quick to see this, went on.
“Ah, you think it don’t look much like it, eh? Well, I don’t wonder. But, you see, it isn’t worth my while bothering about tinkering up this place. Here it doesn’t matter how one lives. But I’m just waiting till I’ve made my pile, and then—” And the concluding blank left scope for the most magnificent, if somewhat vague possibilities.
They returned indoors, and Anstey made the heat and the walk an excuse for another glass of grog. Then a native knocked at the door to announce that the missing steed had been found and brought back. Harry suggested that it was time to start on their return ride to Maritzburg. But of this their host would not hear.
“Stay the night, anyhow,” he said. “That is, if you don’t mind roughing it. I can knock you up a shakedown of some sort. I meant to have had the spare room arranged when I first heard you were coming out, Gerard. But I dare say you can manage without white sheets.”
Gerard, of course, declared that, if anything, he rather preferred it. That point settled, Anstey became even more the effusively genial host; but, with all his desire to be entertaining, both were sensible of a want of something—a difference between the perfectly frank and self-possessed geniality of John Dawes, for instance. They were joined at supper by the wispy-faced youth, who came straight in from his duties in the store—now closed for the night—without going through any such superfluous ceremony as washing. Afterwards, when the talk was in full swing, Anstey would constantly appeal to his subordinate for confirmation of his statements or anecdotes—“Isn’t that so, Smith?” “Didn’t I, Smith?” and so forth; whereupon the latter would remove his pipe from his mouth, and spit and remark, “Ja, that’s so.” Which was the full extent of his conversation.
Chapter Six.Gerard is Launched.“Why not stay on here a bit, Gerard, and help me in the store?”Thus Anstey, on the following day, after dinner. The two were alone. Harry Maitland had returned to Maritzburg, disgusted with the exceeding roughness of his night’s quarters, which together with the booming snores of Smith, who slept in the adjoining store, had effectually hindered him from getting any sleep to speak of. Gerard, however, had yielded to his relative’s urgent invitation to stay a few days and talk matters over. He, too, found his quarters none too comfortable, and he did not like Anstey—indeed, he feared he never should like him; but, he reflected with something of a sigh, beggars cannot be choosers. He was a stranger in a strange land, and after all this man was his relative, though a distant one, and showed every desire to help him.“It is very good of you,” he replied. “But I know nothing of that sort of business.”“Pooh! You don’t want to know anything—at least—that is—I mean,” correcting himself hurriedly, “there’s nothing very technical about it. You only want a little commonsense and ordinary smartness, and of that I should say you had plenty. Well, then, we’ll consider the matter settled. Smith is leaving me soon, and until he does I’ll give you ten shillings a week and the run of your teeth. Afterwards I’ll give you more. You see, you’ll be learning a useful business all for nothing—a very paying one, too—and getting a trifle of pay for it besides. The fact is, Gerard, I want a decent kind of fellow-countryman about me, an educated chap like yourself. One falls into rough ways all by one’s self.”There was such a genuine ring about this speech, that Gerard felt quite ashamed of his former mistrust. What a snob he had been to dislike the man because he was a bit wanting in polish! The thought moved him to throw an extra warmth into his expressions of thanks.“Pooh! my dear fellow, don’t say another word,” said Anstey. “By-and-by, when you are thoroughly up to the mark, I might leave you here in charge, and open another place somewhere else. Extend the business, don’t you know—extend the business. Storekeeping’s the most paying thing in the world if you only know what you’re about. I’ve always intended to extend as soon as I could get hold of some decent fellow, and that lout Smith’s of no good,” sinking his voice. “I’m getting rid of him. Then, when you know your business, I might take you into partnership, and we might run houses all over the Colony.”To a practically penniless lad, who had just come out there to seek his fortune, this was very glowing, very tempting sort of talk. Gerard began to see himself already coining wealth, as the other had said “hand over fist,” and again he felt ashamed of his first unfavourable impressions of the man who was now so freely holding out to him a helping hand.But when he set to work in real earnest, he discovered, as many another had done before him and will do again, that the royal road to wealth, if sure, was desperately slow, and to one of his temperament intolerably irksome. The whole day, from early morning till long after dark, was spent in the close atmosphere of that stuffy room, rendered foetid by the chronic presence of uncleanly natives, and such unsavoury goods as hides, sheepskins, etc., handing things over the counter in exchange for the hard-earned sixpences and threepenny-bits of his dusky customers. Now and then, too, a white traveller or transport-rider would look in to make a purchase, and the short, offhand manner of some of these would try his temper sorely. Was it for this he had come out to Natal? Where was the free, healthy, open-air life he and his young companions at home had so glowingly evolved? He remembered the envy with which his schoolfellows had regarded him when they knew he was going out to a colony. Would he be an object for envy if they could see him now? Why, he was more of a prisoner than ever he had been when chained, as he thought, to the school desks. He had, in fact, become nothing more nor less than a shopkeeper.Smith had in no wise seemed to resent the presence of his supplanter. He was even impassively good-natured, and in his stolid way would give Gerard the benefit of his experience. He put him up to all the little tricks of the native customers, and showed him innumerable dodges for lightening his own labour. As for books, why, there were none to speak of, or at any rate they were precious queerly kept, he said. Anstey would just clear the till when he thought there was enough in it, or when he wanted to go away anywhere; then it would fill up again as before, with like result.“I suppose you know,” said Smith, in his wooden, expressionless manner, “I’ve got the sack on your account?”Gerard started.“On my account! Surely not. Why, I thought you were going anyhow.”“So? Well, I wasn’t. Soon as you came, Anstey gave me notice to clear.”“Good heavens! But that would be beastly unfair to you,” cried Gerard, in great distress. “I’ll tell him I won’t agree. I’ll go and tell him now at once.”“Sit still, Ridgeley. That wouldn’t help me any. You’re a good fellow, I believe, and if it was any one but Anstey, I’d say it was kind of natural to want to stick in his own relation. Still, I’ve done very well for him, and for less pay than most chaps would ask. But, to tell the truth, I’m sick of the berth, dead sick of it, and had made up my mind to clear anyhow. Don’t you get bothering Anstey over it. I say, though. He was pretty boozy last night, eh?”Gerard shrugged his shoulders with a look of mingled distress and disgust. He had noted with some anxiety that his relative was too much addicted to the bottle, but he had never seen him quite so bad as on the occasion just alluded to. Anstey himself had referred to this failing once or twice, declaring that the sort of life was of a nature to make any man feel “hipped,” and take a “pick-me-up” too many, but that now he had got a decent fellow for company he reckoned it might make a difference. He seemed, in fact, to have taken a real liking to his young kinsman, and would sit at home of an evening on purpose to talk to him, instead of riding off to the nearest bar. Gerard had begun to think he might even be instrumental in getting him out of his drinking habits.One day Smith, while absent for some minutes from the store, was attracted back again by something of a hubbub going on therein. Returning, he beheld Gerard confronted by three natives, the latter haranguing and gesticulating wildly in remonstrance, the former gesticulating almost as wildly, but tongue-tied by reason of his inability to master more than a few words of their language. The natives were holding out to Gerard two large bottles filled with some liquid, which he was as emphatically refusing to accept.“What’s the row, Ridgeley?”“Row?” answered Gerard, in a disgusted tone. “Row? Why, these fellows asked me to fill their bottles with paraffin, and I did so. Now they won’t pay for it, and want me to take it back.”Smith opened his head, and emitted as large a guffaw as he ever allowed himself to indulge in. Then he went to the front door and looked out over theveldt, and returning took the two bottles and emptied their contents back into the paraffin tin. Then he gave the bottles a brief rinse in a tub of water, and filling them up from another tin precisely similar to the first, handed them to the natives. The latter paid down their money, and stowing the bottles carefully away among their blankets, departed, now thoroughly satisfied.“Didn’t I give them the right kind?” said Gerard, who had witnessed this performance with some amazement. “Ah, I see!” he broke off, as an odour of spirits greeted his nostrils.“You just didn’t give them the right kind. Look here. When a nigger brings a bottle and asks for paraffin, and goes like this—see?” making a rapid sort of drinking sign, “you fill it out of this tin.”“But why don’t they ask for it outright? Isn’t there a word for it in their language? Those fellows distinctly said ‘paraffin.’”Again Smith emitted that half-hearted guffaw.“Look here, Ridgeley. I’d have put you up to the ropes, but reckoned it was Anstey’s business. Don’t you know the law of the Colony doesn’t allow grog to be sold to niggers, even in licenced houses, but there’s a sight of it done for all that. This isn’t a licenced house, but we’ve got to run with the times.”“And what if you’re caught?”“Mortal stiff fine. But that would be Anstey’s look-out, not yours or mine. And I tell you what. It’s lucky for him I ain’t a chap who’s likely to bear a grudge or cut up nasty, or I might round on him properly for giving me the sack.”This incident had set Gerard thinking, and in fact it added considerable weight to his dissatisfaction with his present position. Honest trade was one thing, but to be required daily to break the laws of the land was another. After Smith’s departure, he put the matter fairly to his employer.“Oh, hang it! every one does it,” was the characteristic reply. “You’ll never get on in life, Gerard, if you carry all those scruples along with you. Too much top-hamper, don’t you know—capsize the ship. See? Eh, what? Against the law, did you say? Well, that’s the fault of the law for being so rotten. Meanwhile, we’ve got to live, and if the fellows don’t buy grog here they will at the next place. We may just as well get their custom as the other Johnny. Besides, it’s good for trade all round. They will always deal for choice at a place where they know they can get a glass or a bottle of grog when they want it.”Apart from being in itself an abstraction, the “law” is a thing which stands in much the same relationship towards the average respectable citizen its the schoolmaster does towards even the best-disposed of boys—to wit, there is about it a smack of the “natural enemy.” This being so—we record it with grief—Gerard, who was young, and though a well-principled lad, very much removed from a prig, allowed his conscience to be so far seared as to accept and indeed act upon this explanation. We further regret to add that he filled many and many a subsequent bottle with “paraffin,” as set forward in Smith’s instructions, receiving the price therefor without a qualm.He was now in charge of the whole place, and his sense of authority and responsibility had gone far towards reconciling him to the irksomeness of the life. He was able to write home with some pride, saying that he had found employment from the very first, and not only employment, but fair prospects of advancement—thanks to Anstey—which entailed upon that worthy a more grateful letter of acknowledgment than he deserved, as we shall see. He had mastered a good many Zulu words—that being the language of nearly all the natives of Natal, whether of pure or mixed race—and was getting on well all round. He had made his rough quarters as comfortable as he could, having sent over to Maritzburg for his outfit. Still, the life, as we have said, was terribly irksome. Day after day, the same monotonous round. He had no acquaintances of his own age or social standing. Now and again some friend of his employer’s would drop in and literally make a night of it, and then his disgust and depression knew no bounds. Then, too, his prospects seemed to vanish into clouds and mist. Would he, too, become one day like Anstey, stagnating out his life in a dead grey level, without a thought or interest beyond the exigencies of the hour? And he would gaze wearily out upon the open level flat of theveldt, which surrounded the place, and the dusty monotonous riband of road, and it would seem, young as he was, that life was hardly worth living at the price. Still, he was earning his own livelihood, and the novelty and independence of the feeling went far to counterbalance all other drawbacks.One day Anstey said to him, “Wouldn’t you like to have some interest, some share in the business, Gerard?”“Some interest!” he echoed, thinking that he had rather too much of that, seeing that his employer left all the burden of it to him and pocketed all the advantages himself.“Why yes. How would it be to put something into it? It would give you a share—make you a kind of partner, don’t you see?”“But I haven’t got anything to put into it except the mere trifle I brought out with me.”“Wouldn’t the people at home invest something for you, eh? It would pay them and—you—a thundering rate of interest, and give you a share in the concern besides.”But Gerard was able completely to disabuse Anstey’s mind of any illusions on that head. “The people at home” had done all they could in scraping together enough for Gerard’s passage and outfit, together with a few pounds to start him on landing. There was not the faintest chance of them doing anything further.“How much did you bring out with you?” pursued Anstey.Gerard was able to inform him he had brought out about thirty pounds; but what with travelling and other expenses he had not much more than twenty-five at his disposal—a mere trifle.“A mere trifle indeed,” rejoined Anstey. “But then we all have to start upon trifles. Now, why not put that twenty-five pounds into this concern? You would get interest on it, and it would have the additional advantage of being, so to speak, under your own eye instead of lying idle at the bank. I should strongly recommend you to invest it in this. But think it well over first.”And Gerard, after thinking it over, resolved to follow his relative’s advice, and invested his twenty-five pounds accordingly.He had now been three months with Anstey, and the latter had kept him pretty well with his nose to the grindstone, discouraging especially any desire to visit Maritzburg. He had far better stick to business, he said. Knocking around the city might be good enough fun for fellows with plenty of coin, but one with scarcely any was very likely to get rid of what little he had. Of Harry Maitland, Gerard had hardly heard since they parted. He had received one letter stating that the writer had found a lot of friends through his letters of introduction, among whom he was having a right good time. He would ride over some day and see him. But that day never came. Harry was not going to take the trouble to hunt up a fellow who had become what he superciliously termed a mere counter-jumper. So Gerard just plodded on, determined to stick to what was a certainty as long as possible in spite of everything, the “everything” being mainly a certain change which he thought to have detected of late in his employer’s behaviour towards him—a change not for the better.But just at this time there befell him an adventure which was destined to affect materially his after destinies, and that in more ways than one.
“Why not stay on here a bit, Gerard, and help me in the store?”
Thus Anstey, on the following day, after dinner. The two were alone. Harry Maitland had returned to Maritzburg, disgusted with the exceeding roughness of his night’s quarters, which together with the booming snores of Smith, who slept in the adjoining store, had effectually hindered him from getting any sleep to speak of. Gerard, however, had yielded to his relative’s urgent invitation to stay a few days and talk matters over. He, too, found his quarters none too comfortable, and he did not like Anstey—indeed, he feared he never should like him; but, he reflected with something of a sigh, beggars cannot be choosers. He was a stranger in a strange land, and after all this man was his relative, though a distant one, and showed every desire to help him.
“It is very good of you,” he replied. “But I know nothing of that sort of business.”
“Pooh! You don’t want to know anything—at least—that is—I mean,” correcting himself hurriedly, “there’s nothing very technical about it. You only want a little commonsense and ordinary smartness, and of that I should say you had plenty. Well, then, we’ll consider the matter settled. Smith is leaving me soon, and until he does I’ll give you ten shillings a week and the run of your teeth. Afterwards I’ll give you more. You see, you’ll be learning a useful business all for nothing—a very paying one, too—and getting a trifle of pay for it besides. The fact is, Gerard, I want a decent kind of fellow-countryman about me, an educated chap like yourself. One falls into rough ways all by one’s self.”
There was such a genuine ring about this speech, that Gerard felt quite ashamed of his former mistrust. What a snob he had been to dislike the man because he was a bit wanting in polish! The thought moved him to throw an extra warmth into his expressions of thanks.
“Pooh! my dear fellow, don’t say another word,” said Anstey. “By-and-by, when you are thoroughly up to the mark, I might leave you here in charge, and open another place somewhere else. Extend the business, don’t you know—extend the business. Storekeeping’s the most paying thing in the world if you only know what you’re about. I’ve always intended to extend as soon as I could get hold of some decent fellow, and that lout Smith’s of no good,” sinking his voice. “I’m getting rid of him. Then, when you know your business, I might take you into partnership, and we might run houses all over the Colony.”
To a practically penniless lad, who had just come out there to seek his fortune, this was very glowing, very tempting sort of talk. Gerard began to see himself already coining wealth, as the other had said “hand over fist,” and again he felt ashamed of his first unfavourable impressions of the man who was now so freely holding out to him a helping hand.
But when he set to work in real earnest, he discovered, as many another had done before him and will do again, that the royal road to wealth, if sure, was desperately slow, and to one of his temperament intolerably irksome. The whole day, from early morning till long after dark, was spent in the close atmosphere of that stuffy room, rendered foetid by the chronic presence of uncleanly natives, and such unsavoury goods as hides, sheepskins, etc., handing things over the counter in exchange for the hard-earned sixpences and threepenny-bits of his dusky customers. Now and then, too, a white traveller or transport-rider would look in to make a purchase, and the short, offhand manner of some of these would try his temper sorely. Was it for this he had come out to Natal? Where was the free, healthy, open-air life he and his young companions at home had so glowingly evolved? He remembered the envy with which his schoolfellows had regarded him when they knew he was going out to a colony. Would he be an object for envy if they could see him now? Why, he was more of a prisoner than ever he had been when chained, as he thought, to the school desks. He had, in fact, become nothing more nor less than a shopkeeper.
Smith had in no wise seemed to resent the presence of his supplanter. He was even impassively good-natured, and in his stolid way would give Gerard the benefit of his experience. He put him up to all the little tricks of the native customers, and showed him innumerable dodges for lightening his own labour. As for books, why, there were none to speak of, or at any rate they were precious queerly kept, he said. Anstey would just clear the till when he thought there was enough in it, or when he wanted to go away anywhere; then it would fill up again as before, with like result.
“I suppose you know,” said Smith, in his wooden, expressionless manner, “I’ve got the sack on your account?”
Gerard started.
“On my account! Surely not. Why, I thought you were going anyhow.”
“So? Well, I wasn’t. Soon as you came, Anstey gave me notice to clear.”
“Good heavens! But that would be beastly unfair to you,” cried Gerard, in great distress. “I’ll tell him I won’t agree. I’ll go and tell him now at once.”
“Sit still, Ridgeley. That wouldn’t help me any. You’re a good fellow, I believe, and if it was any one but Anstey, I’d say it was kind of natural to want to stick in his own relation. Still, I’ve done very well for him, and for less pay than most chaps would ask. But, to tell the truth, I’m sick of the berth, dead sick of it, and had made up my mind to clear anyhow. Don’t you get bothering Anstey over it. I say, though. He was pretty boozy last night, eh?”
Gerard shrugged his shoulders with a look of mingled distress and disgust. He had noted with some anxiety that his relative was too much addicted to the bottle, but he had never seen him quite so bad as on the occasion just alluded to. Anstey himself had referred to this failing once or twice, declaring that the sort of life was of a nature to make any man feel “hipped,” and take a “pick-me-up” too many, but that now he had got a decent fellow for company he reckoned it might make a difference. He seemed, in fact, to have taken a real liking to his young kinsman, and would sit at home of an evening on purpose to talk to him, instead of riding off to the nearest bar. Gerard had begun to think he might even be instrumental in getting him out of his drinking habits.
One day Smith, while absent for some minutes from the store, was attracted back again by something of a hubbub going on therein. Returning, he beheld Gerard confronted by three natives, the latter haranguing and gesticulating wildly in remonstrance, the former gesticulating almost as wildly, but tongue-tied by reason of his inability to master more than a few words of their language. The natives were holding out to Gerard two large bottles filled with some liquid, which he was as emphatically refusing to accept.
“What’s the row, Ridgeley?”
“Row?” answered Gerard, in a disgusted tone. “Row? Why, these fellows asked me to fill their bottles with paraffin, and I did so. Now they won’t pay for it, and want me to take it back.”
Smith opened his head, and emitted as large a guffaw as he ever allowed himself to indulge in. Then he went to the front door and looked out over theveldt, and returning took the two bottles and emptied their contents back into the paraffin tin. Then he gave the bottles a brief rinse in a tub of water, and filling them up from another tin precisely similar to the first, handed them to the natives. The latter paid down their money, and stowing the bottles carefully away among their blankets, departed, now thoroughly satisfied.
“Didn’t I give them the right kind?” said Gerard, who had witnessed this performance with some amazement. “Ah, I see!” he broke off, as an odour of spirits greeted his nostrils.
“You just didn’t give them the right kind. Look here. When a nigger brings a bottle and asks for paraffin, and goes like this—see?” making a rapid sort of drinking sign, “you fill it out of this tin.”
“But why don’t they ask for it outright? Isn’t there a word for it in their language? Those fellows distinctly said ‘paraffin.’”
Again Smith emitted that half-hearted guffaw.
“Look here, Ridgeley. I’d have put you up to the ropes, but reckoned it was Anstey’s business. Don’t you know the law of the Colony doesn’t allow grog to be sold to niggers, even in licenced houses, but there’s a sight of it done for all that. This isn’t a licenced house, but we’ve got to run with the times.”
“And what if you’re caught?”
“Mortal stiff fine. But that would be Anstey’s look-out, not yours or mine. And I tell you what. It’s lucky for him I ain’t a chap who’s likely to bear a grudge or cut up nasty, or I might round on him properly for giving me the sack.”
This incident had set Gerard thinking, and in fact it added considerable weight to his dissatisfaction with his present position. Honest trade was one thing, but to be required daily to break the laws of the land was another. After Smith’s departure, he put the matter fairly to his employer.
“Oh, hang it! every one does it,” was the characteristic reply. “You’ll never get on in life, Gerard, if you carry all those scruples along with you. Too much top-hamper, don’t you know—capsize the ship. See? Eh, what? Against the law, did you say? Well, that’s the fault of the law for being so rotten. Meanwhile, we’ve got to live, and if the fellows don’t buy grog here they will at the next place. We may just as well get their custom as the other Johnny. Besides, it’s good for trade all round. They will always deal for choice at a place where they know they can get a glass or a bottle of grog when they want it.”
Apart from being in itself an abstraction, the “law” is a thing which stands in much the same relationship towards the average respectable citizen its the schoolmaster does towards even the best-disposed of boys—to wit, there is about it a smack of the “natural enemy.” This being so—we record it with grief—Gerard, who was young, and though a well-principled lad, very much removed from a prig, allowed his conscience to be so far seared as to accept and indeed act upon this explanation. We further regret to add that he filled many and many a subsequent bottle with “paraffin,” as set forward in Smith’s instructions, receiving the price therefor without a qualm.
He was now in charge of the whole place, and his sense of authority and responsibility had gone far towards reconciling him to the irksomeness of the life. He was able to write home with some pride, saying that he had found employment from the very first, and not only employment, but fair prospects of advancement—thanks to Anstey—which entailed upon that worthy a more grateful letter of acknowledgment than he deserved, as we shall see. He had mastered a good many Zulu words—that being the language of nearly all the natives of Natal, whether of pure or mixed race—and was getting on well all round. He had made his rough quarters as comfortable as he could, having sent over to Maritzburg for his outfit. Still, the life, as we have said, was terribly irksome. Day after day, the same monotonous round. He had no acquaintances of his own age or social standing. Now and again some friend of his employer’s would drop in and literally make a night of it, and then his disgust and depression knew no bounds. Then, too, his prospects seemed to vanish into clouds and mist. Would he, too, become one day like Anstey, stagnating out his life in a dead grey level, without a thought or interest beyond the exigencies of the hour? And he would gaze wearily out upon the open level flat of theveldt, which surrounded the place, and the dusty monotonous riband of road, and it would seem, young as he was, that life was hardly worth living at the price. Still, he was earning his own livelihood, and the novelty and independence of the feeling went far to counterbalance all other drawbacks.
One day Anstey said to him, “Wouldn’t you like to have some interest, some share in the business, Gerard?”
“Some interest!” he echoed, thinking that he had rather too much of that, seeing that his employer left all the burden of it to him and pocketed all the advantages himself.
“Why yes. How would it be to put something into it? It would give you a share—make you a kind of partner, don’t you see?”
“But I haven’t got anything to put into it except the mere trifle I brought out with me.”
“Wouldn’t the people at home invest something for you, eh? It would pay them and—you—a thundering rate of interest, and give you a share in the concern besides.”
But Gerard was able completely to disabuse Anstey’s mind of any illusions on that head. “The people at home” had done all they could in scraping together enough for Gerard’s passage and outfit, together with a few pounds to start him on landing. There was not the faintest chance of them doing anything further.
“How much did you bring out with you?” pursued Anstey.
Gerard was able to inform him he had brought out about thirty pounds; but what with travelling and other expenses he had not much more than twenty-five at his disposal—a mere trifle.
“A mere trifle indeed,” rejoined Anstey. “But then we all have to start upon trifles. Now, why not put that twenty-five pounds into this concern? You would get interest on it, and it would have the additional advantage of being, so to speak, under your own eye instead of lying idle at the bank. I should strongly recommend you to invest it in this. But think it well over first.”
And Gerard, after thinking it over, resolved to follow his relative’s advice, and invested his twenty-five pounds accordingly.
He had now been three months with Anstey, and the latter had kept him pretty well with his nose to the grindstone, discouraging especially any desire to visit Maritzburg. He had far better stick to business, he said. Knocking around the city might be good enough fun for fellows with plenty of coin, but one with scarcely any was very likely to get rid of what little he had. Of Harry Maitland, Gerard had hardly heard since they parted. He had received one letter stating that the writer had found a lot of friends through his letters of introduction, among whom he was having a right good time. He would ride over some day and see him. But that day never came. Harry was not going to take the trouble to hunt up a fellow who had become what he superciliously termed a mere counter-jumper. So Gerard just plodded on, determined to stick to what was a certainty as long as possible in spite of everything, the “everything” being mainly a certain change which he thought to have detected of late in his employer’s behaviour towards him—a change not for the better.
But just at this time there befell him an adventure which was destined to affect materially his after destinies, and that in more ways than one.
Chapter Seven.Sobuza, the Zulu.The river Umgeni, at Howick, a point about twelve or fourteen miles west of Maritzburg, hurls itself over a sheer cliff, making a truly magnificent waterfall some hundreds of feet high. So sudden and unlooked-for is the drop that, crossing by the drift a little above the fall, the appearance of the river and the lay of the country would lead the casual visitor to expect nothing very wonderful. Yet, as a matter of fact, viewed from the opposite side of the great basin into which it hurls itself bodily, the Umgeni Fall is one of the grandest sights of its kind.Now, it happened one morning that Gerard Ridgeley, riding through the above-mentioned drift, found his attention attracted by an extraordinary sound, a sort of loud, long-drawn, gasping cry, as though an appeal for help; and it seemed to come from the river. His first impulse was to rein in his steed, but his own position was not quite free from risk, for the river was in a somewhat swollen condition and the drift dangerous. So he plunged on, and, having gained the opposite bank, he halted his panting and dripping horse and sat listening intently.Yes, there it was again, and, oh, Heavens! it came from below the drift. Some one was in the water and in another minute would be over the fall.With lash and spur he urged his horse along the bank. The broad current swept downward swift and strong. He could see the turbid water creaming into foam where it sped in resistless rapids around two or three rock islets, and then curled over the frightful brink, and between himself and the brink, speeding swiftly towards it, swept helplessly onward by the force of the flood, was a round dark object—a man’s head.It was the head of a native. Gerard could even make out the shiny black ring which crowned it. But native or white man, here was a fellow-creature being whirled down to a most horrible death right before his eyes. Again that wild harsh cry for help rang out above the seething hiss of the flood and the dull roar of the cataract below, but shorter, more gaspingly. The man was nearly exhausted. He was swimming curiously too. It seemed as if he was treading water; then his head would sink half under, as though something were dragging him down. Gerard had heard there were crocodiles in the Umgeni. Could it be that the unfortunate man had been seized by one of these? The thought was a terrible one; but he could not see the man perish. In a trice he had kicked off his boots and thrown off his coat, and urging his horse into the river till the depth of the water swept the animal off its legs, he threw himself from its back, for it had become unmanageable with fright, and struck out for the drowning man.The latter was about thirty yards below him, and hardly thrice that distance from the brink. Gerard was a bold and powerful swimmer, and with the aid of the current was beside him in a moment. But what to do next? The upper part of the man’s body was entirely naked. There was nothing to lay hold of him by. But the cool self-possession of the savage met him halfway. The latter gasped out a word or two in his own language and held out his arm. Gerard seized it firmly below the shoulder, and, using no more effort than was just necessary for the other’s support, he husbanded his strength for the final struggle.Now, all this had taken place in a mere moment of time. It would take no more than that to decide their fate. And this seemed sealed.For all his hard condition and desperate pluck, Gerard felt strength and nerve alike well-nigh fail him. The native was a fearful weight, heavier even than one of his size ought to be, and he was not a small man. They were now in the roar and swirl of the rapids. Once or twice Gerard’s foot touched ground, only to be swept off again resistlessly, remorselessly. Several times he thought he must relax his grasp and leave the other to his fate. He could see the smooth glitter of the glassy hump where the river curled over the brink; could feel the vibration of the appalling boom on the rocks below. In a second he—both of them—would be crashed down on to those rocks, a thousand shapeless fragments, unless, that is, he could secure a footing upon the spit of stony islet in front.A yard more will do it. No. The current, split into two, swirls past the obstruction with a perfectly resistless force. He is swept out again as his fingers come within an inch of grasping a projecting stone. Then he—both of them—are whirled over and over in the surging boil of the rapids—the brink is in front—space.Then it seems to Gerard that he is upholding the weight of the whole world. For a most wonderful thing has happened. The native is perfectly stationary—still as though anchored—in the resistless velocity of the current, and now it seems to be his turn to support his would-be rescuer. For the latter’s legs are actually hanging forth over the fearful abyss, and but for the firm grip—now of both hands—which he has upon the other’s arm, he would be shot out into space. The roar and vibration of the mighty fall is bewildering, maddening—the crash upon the rocks, the spuming mist flying away into countless rainbows before his sight. He seems to live a lifetime in that one fearful moment. He must loose his hold and—“Here, mister! I’m going to throw you areim. Can you catch it?”Gerard hardly dares so much as nod an affirmative. He sees as in a dream a couple of bearded faces on the bank above, the owner of one of which is swinging a long, noosed cord of twisted raw hide.“All right! Now—catch!”Swish! The noose flies out, then straightens. It falls on Gerard’s shoulder. Loosening one hand, he quickly passes it round his body. It is hauled taut.“Now—leave go the nigger. He’s all right. He’s anchored.”Instinctively Gerard obeys, and swings free. For a second he is hanging on the smooth, glassy, curling lip of the fall. Should the reim break— But it is staunch. He is drawn slowly up against the current, and hauled safely to land.The native, deprived of Gerard’s support, is seen to be thrown, as it were, with his face downward on the current. Something is holding him back, something which has him fast by the legs; but for it, he would be shot out over the falls. He shouts something in his own language.“By jingo! It’s just as I said,” exclaims one of the men. “He’s anchored.”“Anchored?” wonderingly echoes Gerard, who, beyond being very much out of breath, is none the worse for his narrow escape.“Yes, anchored. He says he’s got a lot ofreimsand truck tangled round his legs, and it’s hitched in something at the bottom of the river. That’s what’s holding him back; and a mighty good thing it is for you, young fellow, as well as for him. You’d have been pounded dust at the bottom of the fall long before this.”The while the speaker has been fixing a knife to the noosed ram, in such wise that the distressed native shall be able to detach it and cut himself loose below water. A warning shout—the noose flies outward—the man catches it without difficulty, for the distance is not great. Then, having made it fast beneath his armpits, he dives under the surface, while the two on the bank—the three in fact, for Gerard now helps to man the line—keep the ram taut. The latter shakes and quivers for a moment like a line with a heavy fish at the end; then the ringed head rises.“Haul away—he’s clear!” is the cry. And in a moment the native is dragged safe to the bank and landed beside his rescuers.Having recovered breath, he proceeded to account for the origin of his mishap. He was on his way to a neighbouring kraal, to obtain possession of a horse which he had left there. He was carrying a headstall and a couple ofreimsfor this purpose, and, thinking it a trifle shorter to ford the river below the drift than at it, had gone into the water accordingly. But the current proved stronger as well as deeper than he had expected. He had been swept off his feet, and then thereimshad somehow or other got entangled round his legs, which were practically tied together, so that he could not swim. It must have been the headstall which, dragging along the bottom, had so opportunely anchored him.“Well, it’s the tallest thing I’ve seen in a good many years,” said one of the men. “Thevery tallest—eh, George?”“Ja, that’s so!” laconically assented George, beginning to shred up a fragment of Boer tobacco in the hollow of his hand.The men were transport-riders, travelling with their waggons, which accounted for the prompt production of the longreimwhich had borne so essential a part in the rescue. They had just come over the rise in time to take in the situation, and with the readiness of resource which characterises their class, were prompt to act accordingly. But the object in which Gerard’s interest was centred was the man whom he had been instrumental in saving from a most horrible death.The latter was a very fine specimen of native manhood, tall, erect, and broad, and with exquisitely modelled limbs. His face, with its short black beard, was firm and pleasing, and the straight fearless glance of the clear eyes seemed to shadow forth the character of the man. He had a grand head, whose broad and lofty forehead was tilted slightly back, as though the shiny black ring which surmounted it were a crown, instead of merely a badge of marriage and manhood; for the Zulu wears his wedding-ring on his head, instead of on his finger, and moreover is not accounted to have attained to manhood until he has the right to wear it. His age might have been anything between thirty and fifty. His only clothing was amútya, which is a sort of apron of hide or cats’ tails hung round the loins by a string.If Gerard expected him to brim over with gratitude, and to vow a life’s service or anything of the sort, he was disappointed. The man made a few laughing remarks in his own language as he pointed to the terrible fall, whose thunderous roar almost drowned their voices where they stood. The two might have been taking a friendly swim together, instead of narrowly escaping a most frightful death.“Who is he?” said Gerard. “Where does he live?”As one of the other men put this question, the native, with a word or two, pointed with his hand to the northward.“But—what’s his name?”The question struck the onlookers as an unpalatable one.“Name?” repeated the native, after the manner of his race when seeking to gain time. “Name? They call me Sobuza. I am of the Aba Qulúsi, of the people of Zulu. Who is he who helped me out of the water?”Gerard told who he was. The two white men exchanged looks of surprise.“Anstey’s relative! So?” they said. “Looking him up, maybe?”Gerard explained his exact position with regard to Anstey. He noticed that the significance of the look exchanged between the pair did not decrease. The Zulu, however, seemed to receive the answer with but little interest. He made one or two ineffectual attempts at Gerard’s name, but the recurring “r”—a letter which none of the Bantu races can pronounce, always in fact making it a sort of guttural aspirate—baffled him, and he gave it up. Then, with a sonorous farewell, he took his departure.“If all Zulus are like him, they must be a splendid race,” said Gerard, gazing after the retreating figure. “That’s the first real one I’ve seen, to my knowledge.”“Ungrateful beggar!” commented one of the men, angrily. “Why, he hardly took the trouble to say ‘Thankee.’ He deserved to have been let go over the fall.”“I’m afraid I’m nearly as bad,” said Gerard. “I don’t—or rather I do—know where I should be if it hadn’t been for you.”“That’s nothing, mister,” was the prompt rejoinder. “Help one another’s the rule of the road—eh, George?”“Ja, that’s so,” assented George again.They chatted on for a while, and smoked a sociable pipe, and Gerard accepted an invitation to accompany his friends in need to their waggons—which were standing waiting for them at the drift higher up—and take a glass of grog, which, with the torrid heat of the sun, combined to keep off any chill which might result from his wetting. Then with much mutual good will they separated.Gerard held on his way, pondering over his adventure, which indeed was a pretty stirring one, and the first he had ever had. He was bound on an errand of partly business, partly pleasure; namely, to visit some people he did not greatly care for on some business of Anstey’s. Still the change from the sedentary round of the store was something, and, hot as it was, he enjoyed the ride. It was Sunday, and thus a sort of holiday, though even on the Sabbath we fear that trade was not altogether at a standstill.That day, however, was destined to be one of incident, of adventure. His visit over, he was riding home in the cool of the evening. The sun was just touching the western sky-line, flooding with a golden light the open, rolling plains. There was nothing specially beautiful in the landscape, in fact it was rather monotonous, but the openness of it gave an idea of free and sweeping space, and the almost unearthly glow of a perfect evening imparted a charm that was all its own. The uncongenial circumstances of his present life faded into insignificance. Gerard felt quite hopeful, quite elated. He felt that it was good even to live.Suddenly a hubbub of voices rose upon the evening air—of native voices, of angry voices—and mingled with it the jarring clash of kerries. Spurring his horse over the slight eminence which rose in front, the cause of it became manifest. A small native kraal stood just back from the road. Issuing from this were some half-dozen figures. A glance served to show that they were engaged in a highly congenial occupation to the savage mind—fighting, to wit.It was a running fight, however, and an unequal one. A tall man was retreating step by step, holding his own gallantly against overwhelming odds. He was armed with nothing but a knobkerrie, with which he struck and parried with lightning-like rapidity. His assailants were mostly armed with two kerries apiece, and were pressing him hard; albeit with such odds in their favour they seemed loth to come to close quarters, remaining, or springing back, just beyond the reach of those terrible whirling blows. To add to the shindy, all the women and children in the kraal were shrilly yelling out jeers at the retreating adversary, and three or four snarling curs lent their yapping to the uproar.“Yauw! great Zulu!” ran the jeers. “We fear you not! Why should we? Ha-ha! We are free people-free people. We are not Cetywayo’s dogs. Ha-ha!”“Dogs!” roared the tall man, his eyes flashing with the light of battle. “Dogs ofAmakafúla! By the head-ring of the Great Great One, were I but armed as ye are, I would keep the whole of this kraal howling like dogs the long night through—I, Sobuza, of the Aba Qulúsi—I alone. Ha!”And with a ferocious downward sweep of his kerrie, he knocked the foremost of his assailants off his legs, receiving in return a numbing blow on the shoulder from the stick of another. All the warrior blood of the martial Zulu was roused, maddened, by the shock. He seemed to gain in stature, and his eyes blazed, as roaring out the war-shout of his race, the deep-throated “Usútu!” he abandoned the offensive and hurled himself like a thunderbolt upon his four remaining adversaries. These, not less agile than himself, scattered a moment previous to closing in upon him from all sides at once. At the same time he was seen to totter and pitch heavily forward. The man whom he had previously swept off his feet had, lying there, gripped him firmly by the legs.Nothing could save him now! With a ferocious shout the others sprang forward, their kerries uplifted. In a moment he would be beaten to a jelly, when—Down went the foremost like a felled ox, before the straight crushing blow of an English fist; while at the same time a deft left-hander met the next with such force as to send him staggering back a dozen paces. Wrenching the two sticks from the fallen man, Gerard pushed them into the hands of the great Zulu. The latter, finding himself thus evenly armed, raised the war-shout “Usútu!” and charged his two remaining assailants. These, seeing how the tables had been turned, did not wait. They ran away as fast as their legs could carry them.“Whou!” cried the Zulu, the ferocity which blazed from his countenance fading into a look of profound contempt. “They show their backs, the cowards. Well, let them run. Ha! they have all gone,” he added, noticing that the others, too, had sneaked quietly away. “Whau!”The last ejaculation was a staccato one of astonishment. For he recognised in Gerard his rescuer of the morning.“I say, friend, you floored those two chappies neatly. By Jove, you did!”Both turned towards the voice. It proceeded from a light buggy, which stood drawn up on the road behind them. In this were seated a young man some three or four years older than himself, and an extremely pretty girl, at sight of whom Gerard looked greatly confused, remembering the circumstances under which she had beheld him.“It was an A1 row,” continued the former. “We saw the whole of it.Allamaghtaag! but I envy the way in which you spun those two to the right and left.”“Well, I had to,” answered Gerard. “It was five to one. That’s not fair play, you know.” And his eyes met the blue ones of the young lady in the buggy, and were inclined to linger there, the more so that the said blue orbs seemed to beam an approval that was to the last degree heterodox in one of the tenderer sex and therefore, theoretically, an uncompromising opponent of deeds of violence.“Who’s your long-legged friend?” went on the young man, proceeding to address a query or two to the Zulu, in the latter’s own language, but in a tone that struck even Gerard as a trifle peremptory. “He’s a surly dog, anyhow,” he continued, annoyed at the curtness of the man’s answer.“He’s a Zulu—a real Zulu—and his name’s Sobuza,” said Gerard.“A Zulu, is he? Do you know him, then?” was the surprised rejoinder.“I didn’t before this morning. But I happen to have got him out of one little difficulty already to-day. I never expected to see him again, though.”“The deuce you did! Was he engaged in the congenial pastime of head-breaking then, too?”“N-no. The fact is—” And then Gerard blushed and stuttered, for he saw no way out of trumpeting his own achievements, and somehow there was something about those blue eyes that made him shrink instinctively from anything approaching this. “The truth is he got into difficulties in the river—a bit of string or something twisted round his legs in the water so that he couldn’t swim, and I helped him out.”The girl’s face lighted up, and she seemed about to say something; but the other interrupted—“By Jove, we must get on. It’ll be dark directly, and looks like a storm in the offing, and we’ve a good way to go. Well, ta-ta to you, sir. So long!” And the buggy spun away over the flat.Gerard followed it with his glance until it was out of sight. Then he turned to the Zulu. That worthy was seated on the ground, calmly taking snuff.“Ha,Umlúngu!” (white man) he exclaimed, as, having completed that operation, he replaced his horn snuff-tube in the hole cut out of the lobe of his ear for that purpose. “This has been a great day—a great day. Surely myinyokahas taken your shape. Twice have you helped me this day. Twice in the same day have you come to my aid. Wonderful—wonderful! The death of the water—to pass through the mighty fall to the Spiritland—that is nothing. It is a fitting end for a warrior. But that I, Sobuza, of the Aba Qulúsi, of the people of Zulu—that I, Sobuza, the second fighting captain of the Udhloko regiment—should be ‘eaten up’ by four or five miserable dogs ofAmakafula(Note 2).Whau! that were indeed the end of the world. I will not forget this day,Umlúngu. Tell me again thy name.”Gerard, who although he understood by no means all of this speech, had picked up sufficient Zulu to grasp most of its burden, repeated his names, slowly and distinctly, again and again. But Sobuza shook his head. He could not pronounce them. The nearest he could come was a sort of Lewis Carrollian contraction of the two—“U’ Jeríji,” pronouncing the “r” as a guttural aspirate.“I shall remember,” he said; “I shall remember. And now, Jeríji, I journey to the northward to the land of the Zulu. Fare thee well.”Instinctively Gerard put forth his hand. With a pleased smile the warrior grasped it in a hearty muscular grip. Then with a sonorous “Hlala gahle,” (or farewell), he turned and strode away over the now fast darkeningveldt.The occupants of the buggy, speeding too ontheirway, were engaged in something of an altercation.“It was too provoking of you, Tom,” the girl was saying, “to rush me away like that.”“So? Well, we’ve no time to spare as it is. And that cloud-bank over there means a big thunderstorm, or I’m a Dutchman.”“I don’t care if it does. And we never found out his name—who he is.”“No more we did, now you mention it,” said the other in a tone of half-regretful interest. “But, after all, we can survive the loss.”“But—he was such a nice-looking boy.”“Oho!” was the rejoinder, accompanied by a roar of laughter. “So that’s the way the cat jumps!”“Don’t be an idiot,” answered the girl, but in a tone which seemed to say the “chaff” was not altogether displeasing to her. “But you remember the report we heard coming through Howick, about two men being nearly carried over the Umgeni Fall to-day, while one was trying to save the other. That’s the hero of the story, depend upon it. I’d have got it all out of him if you hadn’t been in such a desperate hurry. And now we don’t even know who he is!”“No more we do. Let’s put an advertisement in the paper. That’ll draw him—eh? Such a nice-looking boy, too!” he added, mimicking her tone.“Tom, you’re a born idiot,” she rejoined, blushing scarlet.The “nice-looking boy” meanwhile was cantering homeward in the twilight, building castles in the air at a furious rate. Those blue eyes—that voice—hovered before his imagination even as a stray firefly or so hovered before his path. It was long since he had heard the voice or seen the face of any woman of birth and refinement. Anstey was not wont to mix with such, and the few female acquaintances the latter owned, though worthy people enough, were considerably his inferiors in the social scale. At this time, indeed, his mind and heart were peculiarly attuned to such impressions, by reason of his lonely and uncongenial surroundings; more than ever, therefore, would a feeling of discontent, of yearning home-sickness, arise in his mind. Then, by a turn of retrospect, his memory went back to Mr Kingsland’s hearty, straightforward words of advice: “When you’ve got your foot in the stirrup, keep it there. Stick to it, my lad, stick to it, and you’ll do well.” And now hehadgot his foot in the stirrup. Was he to kick it out again in peevish disgust because the stirrup was a bit rusty? No; he hoped he was made of better stuff than that. He must just persevere and hope for better times.He reached home just as the black cloud, which had been rolling up nearer and nearer, with many a red flash and low rumble, began to break into rain. Having hastily put up his horse in the tumble-down stable, and seen him fed, he went indoors, only to find Anstey blind drunk and snoring in an armchair. Utterly disgusted, he helped that worthy to bed, and then, after a cold supper, for which he had little appetite, he sought his own shakedown couch in the comfortless lumber-room. Then the storm broke in a countless succession of vivid flashes and deafening thunder-peals which shook the building to its very foundations; and to the accompaniment of the deluging roar and rush of the rain upon the iron roof he fell fast asleep—to dream that he was rescuing countless numbers of fighting Zulus from the Umgeni Fall, over which a rainbow made up of blue eyes was striving to lure them.Note 1. “Snake.” Zulus are great believers in tutelary spirits, of which each individual has one or more continually watching over him. To such they frequently, though not invariably, attribute the form of the serpent.Note 2. A term of contempt employed by the warlike natives of Zululand to designate the natives dwelling in Natal. Probably a corruption of the popular term “Kafir,”amabeing the plural sign.
The river Umgeni, at Howick, a point about twelve or fourteen miles west of Maritzburg, hurls itself over a sheer cliff, making a truly magnificent waterfall some hundreds of feet high. So sudden and unlooked-for is the drop that, crossing by the drift a little above the fall, the appearance of the river and the lay of the country would lead the casual visitor to expect nothing very wonderful. Yet, as a matter of fact, viewed from the opposite side of the great basin into which it hurls itself bodily, the Umgeni Fall is one of the grandest sights of its kind.
Now, it happened one morning that Gerard Ridgeley, riding through the above-mentioned drift, found his attention attracted by an extraordinary sound, a sort of loud, long-drawn, gasping cry, as though an appeal for help; and it seemed to come from the river. His first impulse was to rein in his steed, but his own position was not quite free from risk, for the river was in a somewhat swollen condition and the drift dangerous. So he plunged on, and, having gained the opposite bank, he halted his panting and dripping horse and sat listening intently.
Yes, there it was again, and, oh, Heavens! it came from below the drift. Some one was in the water and in another minute would be over the fall.
With lash and spur he urged his horse along the bank. The broad current swept downward swift and strong. He could see the turbid water creaming into foam where it sped in resistless rapids around two or three rock islets, and then curled over the frightful brink, and between himself and the brink, speeding swiftly towards it, swept helplessly onward by the force of the flood, was a round dark object—a man’s head.
It was the head of a native. Gerard could even make out the shiny black ring which crowned it. But native or white man, here was a fellow-creature being whirled down to a most horrible death right before his eyes. Again that wild harsh cry for help rang out above the seething hiss of the flood and the dull roar of the cataract below, but shorter, more gaspingly. The man was nearly exhausted. He was swimming curiously too. It seemed as if he was treading water; then his head would sink half under, as though something were dragging him down. Gerard had heard there were crocodiles in the Umgeni. Could it be that the unfortunate man had been seized by one of these? The thought was a terrible one; but he could not see the man perish. In a trice he had kicked off his boots and thrown off his coat, and urging his horse into the river till the depth of the water swept the animal off its legs, he threw himself from its back, for it had become unmanageable with fright, and struck out for the drowning man.
The latter was about thirty yards below him, and hardly thrice that distance from the brink. Gerard was a bold and powerful swimmer, and with the aid of the current was beside him in a moment. But what to do next? The upper part of the man’s body was entirely naked. There was nothing to lay hold of him by. But the cool self-possession of the savage met him halfway. The latter gasped out a word or two in his own language and held out his arm. Gerard seized it firmly below the shoulder, and, using no more effort than was just necessary for the other’s support, he husbanded his strength for the final struggle.
Now, all this had taken place in a mere moment of time. It would take no more than that to decide their fate. And this seemed sealed.
For all his hard condition and desperate pluck, Gerard felt strength and nerve alike well-nigh fail him. The native was a fearful weight, heavier even than one of his size ought to be, and he was not a small man. They were now in the roar and swirl of the rapids. Once or twice Gerard’s foot touched ground, only to be swept off again resistlessly, remorselessly. Several times he thought he must relax his grasp and leave the other to his fate. He could see the smooth glitter of the glassy hump where the river curled over the brink; could feel the vibration of the appalling boom on the rocks below. In a second he—both of them—would be crashed down on to those rocks, a thousand shapeless fragments, unless, that is, he could secure a footing upon the spit of stony islet in front.
A yard more will do it. No. The current, split into two, swirls past the obstruction with a perfectly resistless force. He is swept out again as his fingers come within an inch of grasping a projecting stone. Then he—both of them—are whirled over and over in the surging boil of the rapids—the brink is in front—space.
Then it seems to Gerard that he is upholding the weight of the whole world. For a most wonderful thing has happened. The native is perfectly stationary—still as though anchored—in the resistless velocity of the current, and now it seems to be his turn to support his would-be rescuer. For the latter’s legs are actually hanging forth over the fearful abyss, and but for the firm grip—now of both hands—which he has upon the other’s arm, he would be shot out into space. The roar and vibration of the mighty fall is bewildering, maddening—the crash upon the rocks, the spuming mist flying away into countless rainbows before his sight. He seems to live a lifetime in that one fearful moment. He must loose his hold and—
“Here, mister! I’m going to throw you areim. Can you catch it?”
Gerard hardly dares so much as nod an affirmative. He sees as in a dream a couple of bearded faces on the bank above, the owner of one of which is swinging a long, noosed cord of twisted raw hide.
“All right! Now—catch!”
Swish! The noose flies out, then straightens. It falls on Gerard’s shoulder. Loosening one hand, he quickly passes it round his body. It is hauled taut.
“Now—leave go the nigger. He’s all right. He’s anchored.”
Instinctively Gerard obeys, and swings free. For a second he is hanging on the smooth, glassy, curling lip of the fall. Should the reim break— But it is staunch. He is drawn slowly up against the current, and hauled safely to land.
The native, deprived of Gerard’s support, is seen to be thrown, as it were, with his face downward on the current. Something is holding him back, something which has him fast by the legs; but for it, he would be shot out over the falls. He shouts something in his own language.
“By jingo! It’s just as I said,” exclaims one of the men. “He’s anchored.”
“Anchored?” wonderingly echoes Gerard, who, beyond being very much out of breath, is none the worse for his narrow escape.
“Yes, anchored. He says he’s got a lot ofreimsand truck tangled round his legs, and it’s hitched in something at the bottom of the river. That’s what’s holding him back; and a mighty good thing it is for you, young fellow, as well as for him. You’d have been pounded dust at the bottom of the fall long before this.”
The while the speaker has been fixing a knife to the noosed ram, in such wise that the distressed native shall be able to detach it and cut himself loose below water. A warning shout—the noose flies outward—the man catches it without difficulty, for the distance is not great. Then, having made it fast beneath his armpits, he dives under the surface, while the two on the bank—the three in fact, for Gerard now helps to man the line—keep the ram taut. The latter shakes and quivers for a moment like a line with a heavy fish at the end; then the ringed head rises.
“Haul away—he’s clear!” is the cry. And in a moment the native is dragged safe to the bank and landed beside his rescuers.
Having recovered breath, he proceeded to account for the origin of his mishap. He was on his way to a neighbouring kraal, to obtain possession of a horse which he had left there. He was carrying a headstall and a couple ofreimsfor this purpose, and, thinking it a trifle shorter to ford the river below the drift than at it, had gone into the water accordingly. But the current proved stronger as well as deeper than he had expected. He had been swept off his feet, and then thereimshad somehow or other got entangled round his legs, which were practically tied together, so that he could not swim. It must have been the headstall which, dragging along the bottom, had so opportunely anchored him.
“Well, it’s the tallest thing I’ve seen in a good many years,” said one of the men. “Thevery tallest—eh, George?”
“Ja, that’s so!” laconically assented George, beginning to shred up a fragment of Boer tobacco in the hollow of his hand.
The men were transport-riders, travelling with their waggons, which accounted for the prompt production of the longreimwhich had borne so essential a part in the rescue. They had just come over the rise in time to take in the situation, and with the readiness of resource which characterises their class, were prompt to act accordingly. But the object in which Gerard’s interest was centred was the man whom he had been instrumental in saving from a most horrible death.
The latter was a very fine specimen of native manhood, tall, erect, and broad, and with exquisitely modelled limbs. His face, with its short black beard, was firm and pleasing, and the straight fearless glance of the clear eyes seemed to shadow forth the character of the man. He had a grand head, whose broad and lofty forehead was tilted slightly back, as though the shiny black ring which surmounted it were a crown, instead of merely a badge of marriage and manhood; for the Zulu wears his wedding-ring on his head, instead of on his finger, and moreover is not accounted to have attained to manhood until he has the right to wear it. His age might have been anything between thirty and fifty. His only clothing was amútya, which is a sort of apron of hide or cats’ tails hung round the loins by a string.
If Gerard expected him to brim over with gratitude, and to vow a life’s service or anything of the sort, he was disappointed. The man made a few laughing remarks in his own language as he pointed to the terrible fall, whose thunderous roar almost drowned their voices where they stood. The two might have been taking a friendly swim together, instead of narrowly escaping a most frightful death.
“Who is he?” said Gerard. “Where does he live?”
As one of the other men put this question, the native, with a word or two, pointed with his hand to the northward.
“But—what’s his name?”
The question struck the onlookers as an unpalatable one.
“Name?” repeated the native, after the manner of his race when seeking to gain time. “Name? They call me Sobuza. I am of the Aba Qulúsi, of the people of Zulu. Who is he who helped me out of the water?”
Gerard told who he was. The two white men exchanged looks of surprise.
“Anstey’s relative! So?” they said. “Looking him up, maybe?”
Gerard explained his exact position with regard to Anstey. He noticed that the significance of the look exchanged between the pair did not decrease. The Zulu, however, seemed to receive the answer with but little interest. He made one or two ineffectual attempts at Gerard’s name, but the recurring “r”—a letter which none of the Bantu races can pronounce, always in fact making it a sort of guttural aspirate—baffled him, and he gave it up. Then, with a sonorous farewell, he took his departure.
“If all Zulus are like him, they must be a splendid race,” said Gerard, gazing after the retreating figure. “That’s the first real one I’ve seen, to my knowledge.”
“Ungrateful beggar!” commented one of the men, angrily. “Why, he hardly took the trouble to say ‘Thankee.’ He deserved to have been let go over the fall.”
“I’m afraid I’m nearly as bad,” said Gerard. “I don’t—or rather I do—know where I should be if it hadn’t been for you.”
“That’s nothing, mister,” was the prompt rejoinder. “Help one another’s the rule of the road—eh, George?”
“Ja, that’s so,” assented George again.
They chatted on for a while, and smoked a sociable pipe, and Gerard accepted an invitation to accompany his friends in need to their waggons—which were standing waiting for them at the drift higher up—and take a glass of grog, which, with the torrid heat of the sun, combined to keep off any chill which might result from his wetting. Then with much mutual good will they separated.
Gerard held on his way, pondering over his adventure, which indeed was a pretty stirring one, and the first he had ever had. He was bound on an errand of partly business, partly pleasure; namely, to visit some people he did not greatly care for on some business of Anstey’s. Still the change from the sedentary round of the store was something, and, hot as it was, he enjoyed the ride. It was Sunday, and thus a sort of holiday, though even on the Sabbath we fear that trade was not altogether at a standstill.
That day, however, was destined to be one of incident, of adventure. His visit over, he was riding home in the cool of the evening. The sun was just touching the western sky-line, flooding with a golden light the open, rolling plains. There was nothing specially beautiful in the landscape, in fact it was rather monotonous, but the openness of it gave an idea of free and sweeping space, and the almost unearthly glow of a perfect evening imparted a charm that was all its own. The uncongenial circumstances of his present life faded into insignificance. Gerard felt quite hopeful, quite elated. He felt that it was good even to live.
Suddenly a hubbub of voices rose upon the evening air—of native voices, of angry voices—and mingled with it the jarring clash of kerries. Spurring his horse over the slight eminence which rose in front, the cause of it became manifest. A small native kraal stood just back from the road. Issuing from this were some half-dozen figures. A glance served to show that they were engaged in a highly congenial occupation to the savage mind—fighting, to wit.
It was a running fight, however, and an unequal one. A tall man was retreating step by step, holding his own gallantly against overwhelming odds. He was armed with nothing but a knobkerrie, with which he struck and parried with lightning-like rapidity. His assailants were mostly armed with two kerries apiece, and were pressing him hard; albeit with such odds in their favour they seemed loth to come to close quarters, remaining, or springing back, just beyond the reach of those terrible whirling blows. To add to the shindy, all the women and children in the kraal were shrilly yelling out jeers at the retreating adversary, and three or four snarling curs lent their yapping to the uproar.
“Yauw! great Zulu!” ran the jeers. “We fear you not! Why should we? Ha-ha! We are free people-free people. We are not Cetywayo’s dogs. Ha-ha!”
“Dogs!” roared the tall man, his eyes flashing with the light of battle. “Dogs ofAmakafúla! By the head-ring of the Great Great One, were I but armed as ye are, I would keep the whole of this kraal howling like dogs the long night through—I, Sobuza, of the Aba Qulúsi—I alone. Ha!”
And with a ferocious downward sweep of his kerrie, he knocked the foremost of his assailants off his legs, receiving in return a numbing blow on the shoulder from the stick of another. All the warrior blood of the martial Zulu was roused, maddened, by the shock. He seemed to gain in stature, and his eyes blazed, as roaring out the war-shout of his race, the deep-throated “Usútu!” he abandoned the offensive and hurled himself like a thunderbolt upon his four remaining adversaries. These, not less agile than himself, scattered a moment previous to closing in upon him from all sides at once. At the same time he was seen to totter and pitch heavily forward. The man whom he had previously swept off his feet had, lying there, gripped him firmly by the legs.
Nothing could save him now! With a ferocious shout the others sprang forward, their kerries uplifted. In a moment he would be beaten to a jelly, when—
Down went the foremost like a felled ox, before the straight crushing blow of an English fist; while at the same time a deft left-hander met the next with such force as to send him staggering back a dozen paces. Wrenching the two sticks from the fallen man, Gerard pushed them into the hands of the great Zulu. The latter, finding himself thus evenly armed, raised the war-shout “Usútu!” and charged his two remaining assailants. These, seeing how the tables had been turned, did not wait. They ran away as fast as their legs could carry them.
“Whou!” cried the Zulu, the ferocity which blazed from his countenance fading into a look of profound contempt. “They show their backs, the cowards. Well, let them run. Ha! they have all gone,” he added, noticing that the others, too, had sneaked quietly away. “Whau!”
The last ejaculation was a staccato one of astonishment. For he recognised in Gerard his rescuer of the morning.
“I say, friend, you floored those two chappies neatly. By Jove, you did!”
Both turned towards the voice. It proceeded from a light buggy, which stood drawn up on the road behind them. In this were seated a young man some three or four years older than himself, and an extremely pretty girl, at sight of whom Gerard looked greatly confused, remembering the circumstances under which she had beheld him.
“It was an A1 row,” continued the former. “We saw the whole of it.Allamaghtaag! but I envy the way in which you spun those two to the right and left.”
“Well, I had to,” answered Gerard. “It was five to one. That’s not fair play, you know.” And his eyes met the blue ones of the young lady in the buggy, and were inclined to linger there, the more so that the said blue orbs seemed to beam an approval that was to the last degree heterodox in one of the tenderer sex and therefore, theoretically, an uncompromising opponent of deeds of violence.
“Who’s your long-legged friend?” went on the young man, proceeding to address a query or two to the Zulu, in the latter’s own language, but in a tone that struck even Gerard as a trifle peremptory. “He’s a surly dog, anyhow,” he continued, annoyed at the curtness of the man’s answer.
“He’s a Zulu—a real Zulu—and his name’s Sobuza,” said Gerard.
“A Zulu, is he? Do you know him, then?” was the surprised rejoinder.
“I didn’t before this morning. But I happen to have got him out of one little difficulty already to-day. I never expected to see him again, though.”
“The deuce you did! Was he engaged in the congenial pastime of head-breaking then, too?”
“N-no. The fact is—” And then Gerard blushed and stuttered, for he saw no way out of trumpeting his own achievements, and somehow there was something about those blue eyes that made him shrink instinctively from anything approaching this. “The truth is he got into difficulties in the river—a bit of string or something twisted round his legs in the water so that he couldn’t swim, and I helped him out.”
The girl’s face lighted up, and she seemed about to say something; but the other interrupted—
“By Jove, we must get on. It’ll be dark directly, and looks like a storm in the offing, and we’ve a good way to go. Well, ta-ta to you, sir. So long!” And the buggy spun away over the flat.
Gerard followed it with his glance until it was out of sight. Then he turned to the Zulu. That worthy was seated on the ground, calmly taking snuff.
“Ha,Umlúngu!” (white man) he exclaimed, as, having completed that operation, he replaced his horn snuff-tube in the hole cut out of the lobe of his ear for that purpose. “This has been a great day—a great day. Surely myinyokahas taken your shape. Twice have you helped me this day. Twice in the same day have you come to my aid. Wonderful—wonderful! The death of the water—to pass through the mighty fall to the Spiritland—that is nothing. It is a fitting end for a warrior. But that I, Sobuza, of the Aba Qulúsi, of the people of Zulu—that I, Sobuza, the second fighting captain of the Udhloko regiment—should be ‘eaten up’ by four or five miserable dogs ofAmakafula(Note 2).Whau! that were indeed the end of the world. I will not forget this day,Umlúngu. Tell me again thy name.”
Gerard, who although he understood by no means all of this speech, had picked up sufficient Zulu to grasp most of its burden, repeated his names, slowly and distinctly, again and again. But Sobuza shook his head. He could not pronounce them. The nearest he could come was a sort of Lewis Carrollian contraction of the two—“U’ Jeríji,” pronouncing the “r” as a guttural aspirate.
“I shall remember,” he said; “I shall remember. And now, Jeríji, I journey to the northward to the land of the Zulu. Fare thee well.”
Instinctively Gerard put forth his hand. With a pleased smile the warrior grasped it in a hearty muscular grip. Then with a sonorous “Hlala gahle,” (or farewell), he turned and strode away over the now fast darkeningveldt.
The occupants of the buggy, speeding too ontheirway, were engaged in something of an altercation.
“It was too provoking of you, Tom,” the girl was saying, “to rush me away like that.”
“So? Well, we’ve no time to spare as it is. And that cloud-bank over there means a big thunderstorm, or I’m a Dutchman.”
“I don’t care if it does. And we never found out his name—who he is.”
“No more we did, now you mention it,” said the other in a tone of half-regretful interest. “But, after all, we can survive the loss.”
“But—he was such a nice-looking boy.”
“Oho!” was the rejoinder, accompanied by a roar of laughter. “So that’s the way the cat jumps!”
“Don’t be an idiot,” answered the girl, but in a tone which seemed to say the “chaff” was not altogether displeasing to her. “But you remember the report we heard coming through Howick, about two men being nearly carried over the Umgeni Fall to-day, while one was trying to save the other. That’s the hero of the story, depend upon it. I’d have got it all out of him if you hadn’t been in such a desperate hurry. And now we don’t even know who he is!”
“No more we do. Let’s put an advertisement in the paper. That’ll draw him—eh? Such a nice-looking boy, too!” he added, mimicking her tone.
“Tom, you’re a born idiot,” she rejoined, blushing scarlet.
The “nice-looking boy” meanwhile was cantering homeward in the twilight, building castles in the air at a furious rate. Those blue eyes—that voice—hovered before his imagination even as a stray firefly or so hovered before his path. It was long since he had heard the voice or seen the face of any woman of birth and refinement. Anstey was not wont to mix with such, and the few female acquaintances the latter owned, though worthy people enough, were considerably his inferiors in the social scale. At this time, indeed, his mind and heart were peculiarly attuned to such impressions, by reason of his lonely and uncongenial surroundings; more than ever, therefore, would a feeling of discontent, of yearning home-sickness, arise in his mind. Then, by a turn of retrospect, his memory went back to Mr Kingsland’s hearty, straightforward words of advice: “When you’ve got your foot in the stirrup, keep it there. Stick to it, my lad, stick to it, and you’ll do well.” And now hehadgot his foot in the stirrup. Was he to kick it out again in peevish disgust because the stirrup was a bit rusty? No; he hoped he was made of better stuff than that. He must just persevere and hope for better times.
He reached home just as the black cloud, which had been rolling up nearer and nearer, with many a red flash and low rumble, began to break into rain. Having hastily put up his horse in the tumble-down stable, and seen him fed, he went indoors, only to find Anstey blind drunk and snoring in an armchair. Utterly disgusted, he helped that worthy to bed, and then, after a cold supper, for which he had little appetite, he sought his own shakedown couch in the comfortless lumber-room. Then the storm broke in a countless succession of vivid flashes and deafening thunder-peals which shook the building to its very foundations; and to the accompaniment of the deluging roar and rush of the rain upon the iron roof he fell fast asleep—to dream that he was rescuing countless numbers of fighting Zulus from the Umgeni Fall, over which a rainbow made up of blue eyes was striving to lure them.
Note 1. “Snake.” Zulus are great believers in tutelary spirits, of which each individual has one or more continually watching over him. To such they frequently, though not invariably, attribute the form of the serpent.
Note 2. A term of contempt employed by the warlike natives of Zululand to designate the natives dwelling in Natal. Probably a corruption of the popular term “Kafir,”amabeing the plural sign.