For some three hours the party moves forward through the forest shades. Then a halt is called, and, sentinels having been posted, soon the smoke of bivouac fires ascends, and the clatter of cooking utensils mingles with the hum of many voices.
The place selected is an open glade or clearing, overhung on one side by hoary masses of rock. The slave-hunters, as we have said, are divided into two sections, one consisting of negroid Arabs and Wa-Swahili, believers in the Prophet mostly, and clad in array once gaudy but now soiled and tarnished, some few, however, wearing the white haik and burnous; the other of Wangoni, stalwart, martial savages, believers in nothing and clad in not much more. These form camps apart, for at heart each section despises the other, though for purposes of self-interest temporarily welded. A few, but very few, are Arabs of pure blood.
One of these is now engaged in converse with the leader of the party. He is a tall, dignified, keen-faced man, with eyes as piercing as those of a hawk, and his speech is sparing. But if his words are few his deeds are many, and the name of Lutali—which, however, he makes no secret is not his real name—isknown and feared at least as far and as thoroughly as that of the chief of the slavers himself.
For the latter, one glance at him is sufficient to show that if ever man was born to rule with firm but judicious hand such a gang of bloodthirsty freebooters it is this one. The vigour of his powerful frame is apparent with every movement, and the strength and fixity of will expressed in his keen dark face there is no mistaking. But the black, piercing eyes and bronzed features belong to no Arab, no half caste. He is a white man, a European.
Stay! To be accurate, there is just a strain of Arab in him; faint, indeed, as of several generations intervening, yet real enough to qualify him for mysterious rites of blood brotherhood with some of the most powerful chiefs from Tanganyika to Khartoum. And throughout the Congo territory, and many an equatorial tribe beyond, this man's name has been known and feared. No leader of slave-hunters can come near him for bold and wide-sweeping raids, the terror and unexpectedness of which, together with the complete and ruthless fixity of purpose wherewith the objects of them, however strong, however alert, are struck and promptly subjugated, have gained for him among his followers and allies the sobriquet of El Khanac, "The Strangler." But the reader—together with Johannesburg at large—knows him under another name, and that is "Pirate" Hazon.
"Is it prudent, think you, Lutali?" he is saying. "Consider. These Wajalu are a trifle too near the land of the Ba-gcatya. Indeed, we ourselves are too near it now, and a day's journey or more in the samedirection is it not to run our heads into the jaws of the lion?"
"Allah is great, my brother," replies the Arab, with a shrug of the shoulders. "But I would ask, what have we, in our numbers and with arms such as these," gripping significantly his Express rifle, "to fear from those devil-worshippers armed with spears and shields—yea, even the whole nation of them?"
"Yet I have seen an army of the nation of which those 'devil-worshippers' are sprung, armed only with spears and shields, eat up a force three times as large as our own and infinitely better armed, I being one of the few who escaped. And 'The People of the Spider' cannot, from all accounts, be inferior to the stock whence they came."
Lutali shrugs his shoulders again.
"It may be so," he says, "yet there is a large village of these Wajalu which would prove an easy capture and would complete the number we need."
"Then let us chance it," is Hazon's rejoinder.
The Arab makes a murmur of assent and stalks away to his own people, while Hazon returns to where he has left his white colleague.
"Well, Holmes, according to Lutali, they are bent on risking it," he begins, throwing himself upon a rug and proceeding to fill a pipe.
"Are they? I'm not altogether glad, yet if it tends towards hurrying us out of this butchery line of business I'm not altogether sorry. I think I hate it more and more every day."
"It isn't a bad line of business, Holmes," returns Hazon, completely ignoring the smotheredreproachfulness, resentment even, underlying the tone and reply. "Come, now, you've made a goodish bit of money the short time you have been at it. Anyhow, I want to know in what other you would have made anything like as much in the time. Not in fooling with those rotten swindling stocks at the Rand, for instance?"
"Maybe not. But we haven't realized yet. In other words, we are not safe out of the wood yet, Hazon, and so it's too soon to hulloa. I don't believe we are going to get off so easily," he adds.
"Are you going to get on your croaking horse again, and threaten us with 'judgments' and 'curses,' and all that sort of thing?" rejoins the other, with a good-humoured laugh. "Why, man, we are philanthropists—real philanthropists. And I never heard of 'judgments' and 'curses' being showered upon such."
"Philanthropists, are we? That's a good idea. But where, by the way, does the philanthropy come in?"
"Why, just here." Then, impressively, "Listen, now, Holmes. Carry your mind back to all the sights you have seen since we came up the Lualaba until now. Have you forgotten that round dozen of niggers we happened on, buried in the ground up to their necks, and when we had dug up one fellow we found we had taken a lot of trouble for nothing because he'd got his arms and legs broken. The same held good of all the others, except that some were mutilated as well. You remember how sick it made you coming upon those heads in the half darkness; orthose quarters of a human body swinging from branches, to which their owner had been spliced so that, in springing back, the boughs should drag him asunder, as in fact they did? Or the sight of people feeding on the flesh of their own blood relations, and many and many another spectacle no more amusing? Well, then, these barbarities were practised by no wicked slave-raiders, mind, but by the 'quiet, harmless' people upon each other. And they are of every-day occurrence. Well, then, in capturing these gentle souls, and deporting them—for a price—whither they will perforce be taught better manners, we are acting the part of real philanthropists. Do you catch on?"
"What of those we kill? Those Wangoni brutes are never happy unless killing."
"That is inevitable and is the law of life, which is always hard. And, as Lutali would say, who may fight against his destiny? Not that I mean to say we embarked in this business from motives of philanthropy, friend Holmes; I only cite the argument as one to quiet that singularly inconvenient conscience of yours. We did so, Stanninghame and I, at any rate, to make money—quickly, and plenty of it; and I'm not sure Stanninghame doesn't need it more than you and I put together."
"By-the-by, I wonder what on earth has become of Stanninghame all this time?" said Holmes, apparently glad to quit an unprofitable subject.
"So do I. He ought to have joined us by now. He is just a trifle foolhardy, is Stanninghame, in knocking about so far afield alone," and a shade of anxiety steals over the speaker's face.
Holmes makes no reply, and for a while lies back on his rug, puffing away at his pipe and busy with his thoughts. These are not altogether pleasant. The process which had transformed the fine, open-natured, wholesome-hearted young Englishman into a slave-hunter, the confederate of ruthless cut-throats and desperadoes, had, in truth, been such as to engender the reverse of pleasant thoughts. Yet, that he had come to this was rather the fault of circumstances than the fault of Holmes. He had enjoyed the big game shooting and the ivory trading of the earlier stage of the trip, the more so from the consciousness that there was profit in both; and when a large caravan of the above and other legitimate merchandise had been run down to the coast, he had steadfastly refused to take the opportunity of parting company with the others. Then when they had pushed farther into the equatorial regions, and, joining with Lutali, had embarked on their present enterprise, all opportunity of withdrawing had gone. The precise point at which he had cast in his lot with this, Holmes could not with certainty define. Yet there were times when he thought he could. He had relieved his conscience with indignant, passionate protest, when first his eyes became fairly opened to the real nature of the enterprise; and then had supervened that terrible bout of malarial fever, his tardy recovery from which he owed entirely to the care and nursing of both Hazon and Stanninghame. But it left him for a long time weakened in mind and will no less than in body, and what could he do but succumb to the inevitable? Yet he had never entered into the sinister undertaking withthe whole-heartedness of his two conscienceless confederates, and of this the latter were aware.
However, of his scruples they were tolerant enough. He was brimful of pluck, and seemed to enjoy the situation when they were attacked by overwhelming odds and had to fight hard and fiercely, such as befell more than once. And they would insidiously lay salve to his misgivings by such arguments as we have just heard Hazon adduce, or by reminding him of the fortune they were making, or even of the physical advantage he was deriving from the trip.
The latter, indeed, was a fact. The life in the open, the varying climates, frequent and inevitable hardships and never-absent peril, had made their mark upon Holmes. Once recovered from his attack, he began to put on flesh and muscle, and his eyes were clear and bright with that keen alertness which is the result of peril as a constant companion. In short, as they said, he looked twice the man he had done when lounging around the Stock Exchange or the liquor bars of Johannesburg.
Through the hot hours of noontide the raiders lie at their ease. Many are asleep, others conversing in drowsy tones, smoking or chewing tobacco. The Wangoni divide their time about equally between taking snuff and jeering at and teasing the unfortunate captives. These, crouching on the ground, relieved during the halt of their heavy forked yokes, endure it all with the stoicism of the most practical phase of humanity—the savage. No good is to be got out of bewailing their lot, therefore they do not bewail it;moreover, belonging to a savage race, and far from the highest type of the same, they have no thought of the future, and are thus spared the discomfort and anxiety of speculating as to what it may contain for them. Indeed, their chief anxiety at this moment is that of food, of which they would fain have more, and gaze with wistful eyes upon their captors, who are feasting on the remnant of what was until lately their own property. But the latter jeeringly suggest to them the expediency of their devouring each other, since they seem to have a preference for such diet.
Then, as the sun's rays abate somewhat in fierceness, the temporary camp is struck. Bearers take up their loads, fighters look to their arms, the soiled and gaudy finery of the semi-civilized sons of the Prophet contrasting with the shining skins of the naked Wangoni, even as the Winchester and Snider rifles and great sheath-knives and revolvers of the first do with the broad spears and tufted hide shields of the latter. And with the files of dejected-looking slaves, yoked together in their heavy wooden forks, or chained only, the whole caravan, numbering now some six hundred souls, moves onward.
But in the mind of the principal of the two white leaders, as he traces a cipher on the scene of their recent halt, and in that of the other, who watches him, is present, now with deepening anxiety, the same thought, the same speculation: What has become of the third?
Under the shade of a large tree-fern a man is lying asleep.
Around the wilderness spreads in rolling undulation, open here for the most part, though dotted with clumps of bush and trees, which seem to have become detached from the dark line of forest. This, on the one hand, stretches away into endless blue; on the other a broad expanse of water—apparently a fine river, actually a chain of lagoons—with reed-fringed banks; and here and there a low spit, where red flamingoes roost lazily on one leg. Beyond this again lies an unbroken line of forest.
The man is arrayed in the simple costume of the wilderness—a calico shirt, and moleskin trousers protected by leather leggings. A broad-brimmed hat lies under his head, to which, indeed, it serves as sole pillow. He is heavily armed. The right hand still grips an Express rifle in mute suggestion of one accustomed to slumber in the midst of peril. A revolver in a holster rests beside him, and in his leathern belt is a strong sheath knife. Now and again he moves in his sleep, and at such times his unarmed hand seems instinctively to seek out something which is concealed from view, possiblysomething which is suspended round his neck by that light but strong chain. Thus hour after hour rolls over him, as he slumbers on in the burning equatorial heat.
The sleeper turns again uneasily, and as he does so his hand again seeks the steel chain just visible through his open shirt, and, instinctively working down it, closes over that which is secured thereto; then, as though the effect is lulling, once more he is still again, slumbering easily, peacefully.
The sun's rays, slanting now, dart in beneath the scanty shade of the tree-fern, and as they burn upon the dark face, bronzed and hardened by climate and toil, the sleeper's lips are moving, and a peculiarly soft and wistful expression seems to rest upon the firm features. Then his eyes open wide. For a moment he lies, staring up at the green fronds which afford shade no longer, then starts up into a sitting posture. And simultaneous with the movement here and there a faint circular ripple widens on the slimy surface of the lagoon, as each of those dark specks, representing the snout of a basking crocodile, vanishes.
Laurence Stanninghame's outward aspect has undergone some change since last we beheld it, now more than two years ago. The expression of the dark, firm face, burned and bronzed by an equatorial sun, heavily bearded too, has become hard and ruthless, and there is a quick alertness in the penetrating glance of the clear eyes which tells of an ever-present familiarity with peril. Even the movement of sitting up, of suddenly awakening from sleep, yet being wide awake in a moment, contains unconsciously more than a suggestion of this.
A rapid, careful look on all sides. Nothing is stirring in the sultry, penetrating heat; the palmetto thatch of clustering huts away beyond the opposite bank might contain no life for all of it they show. Hardly a bird twittering in the reeds but does so half heartedly. The man's face softens again, taking on the expression it wore while he slept.
While he slept! Why could he not have slept on forever, he thought, his whole being athrill with the memory revived by his dreams? For his dreams had been sweet—wildly, entrancingly sweet. Seldom, indeed, were such vouchsafed to him; but when they were their effect would last, would last vividly. He would treasure up their recollection, would go back upon it.
Now, slumbering there in the torrid heat, by the reed-fringed, crocodile-haunted lagoon, his dreams had wafted him into a more than Paradise. Eyes, starry with a radiant love-light, had laughed into his; around his neck the twining of arms, and the soft, caressing touch of soothing hands upon his life-weary head; the whisper of love-tones, deep, burning, tremulous, into his ear. And from this he had awakened, had awakened to the reality—to the weird and depressing surroundings of human life in its most cruel and debased form; to the recollection of scenes of recurring and hideous peril, of pitiless atrocity, which seemed to render the burning, brassy glare even as the glare of hell; and to the consciousness of similar scenes now immediately impending. Yet the remembrance of that sleeping vision shut him in, surrounded him as with a very halo, sweet, fragrant,enthralling, rolling around his soul as a cloud of intoxicating ether.
Upon a temperament such as that of Laurence Stanninghame the life of the past two years was bound to tell. The hot African glow, the adventurous life, with peril continually for a fellow-traveller, a familiarity with weird and shocking deeds, an utter indifference to human suffering and human life, had strangely affected his inner self. Callous to the woes of others, yet high strung to a degree, his nature at this time presented a stage of complexity which was utterly baffling. That mesmeric property to which Hazon had alluded more than once as one of the effects of the interior was upon him too. It seemed as though he had somehow passed into another world, so dulled was all recollection of his former life, all desire to recall it. Yet one memory remained undimmed.
"Lilith, my soul!" he murmured, his eyes wandering over the brassy, glaring expanse of water and dried-up reed-bed, as though to annihilate space and distance. "Lilith, my life! It is time I looked once more upon that dear face which rendered my dreams so sweet."
His hand, still clasping something within his breast, was drawn forth, that which hung by the steel chain still inclosed within it. A small, flat metal box it was, oblong in shape, and shutting so tightly that at first glance it was hard to see where it opened at all. But open it did, for now he is holding what it contains—holding it lovingly, almost reverently, in the palm of his hand. It is a little case, green velvetworked with flowers, and in the center, spreading fantastically in spidery pattern in dark maroon, is a monogram—Lilith's. And in like manner is this same monogram inlaid upon the lid.
Two tiny portraits it contains when opened—photographic portraits, small, yet clear and delicate as miniatures. Lilith's eyes gaze forth, seeming to shine from the inanimate cardboard as though with the love-light of gladness; Lilith's beautiful form, erect in characteristic attitude, the head slightly thrown back, the sweet lips compressed, just a touch of sadness in their serenity, as though dwelling upon the recollection of that last parting; even the soft curling waves of hair, rippling back from the temples, are lifelike in the clearness of the portrait.
The strong, sweet dream-wave still enclouding his brain, Laurence stands gazing upon these, and his heart is as though enwrapped with a dull tightening pain.
"Sorceress! and does the spell still enthral me here?" he murmurs, "here, and after all this time. Have you forgotten me? Perhaps. No, that cannot be and yet—Time! Time dulls everything. Time brings changes. Perhaps even the memory of me is waning, is becoming dulled."
But the softening love-light in the pictured eyes seems to contradict the conjecture. Here, in the hot brassy glare of the far wilderness, in the haunts of bloodshed and wrong, that sweet, pure image seems clothed as with a divinity to his hungry gaze.
"Others can see you in life; others can hear the music of your voice, my beloved; others can lookinto the light of those eyes, can melt to the radiance of your smile, while I—only the image is mine, the tiny oblong of hard inanimate cardboard," he murmurs, in a tone that is half weariful, half passionate. "And now for the words!"
A slip of folded paper occupies the side of the little tin box. This he extracts and unfolds with a touch that is almost reverent, and, as his eyes wander over the writing, his every faculty of soul and mind and being is concentrated in rapt love upon each word. For not every day will he suffer his eyes to rest upon them, lest too great familiarity with them should dull them with a mechanical nature when seen so often. They are kept for rare occasions, and now, his waking thoughts sweet with the influence of the recent dream, he reckons just such an occasion.
The history of the box, the portraits, the letter, was a strange one. After that last parting, as Laurence was wending his way in the darkness, he became aware that his breast pocket contained something which was not there before. He drew it forth. It was small, flat, hard, oblong. By the light of successive vestas he proceeded to investigate, and there, in the flickering glow, Lilith's sweet eyes gazed out at him from the cardboard, daintily framed within the work of her fingers, even as here in the burning glare of the equatorial sun; and there, too, within the box, lay a folded slip of paper covered with her handwriting—her last words to him, drawing out, perpetuating the echo of her last spoken ones. With a thrill of love and pain, he had stood there in the darkness until his last vesta had burned out, and thenthe letter was not half read, but from that moment the box and its contents had rested upon his heart day and night—through scenes of blood and of woe, through every conceivable phase of hardship and starvation and peril—had rested there as a charm, or amulet, which should shield him from harm. And as such, indeed, its donor had intended it.
And now his eyes, wandering over the paper, as though devouring every word, are nearing the end:
"Does this come as a surprise, my darling—a very sweet surprise? [it ran.] I mean it to be that. 'Is it for good or for ill, this love of ours?' you have said. Surely for good. Keep, then, this image of me, my beloved. Never part with it, day or night, and may it ever, by the very strength of my love for you, be as a talisman—a 'charm'—to stand between you and all peril, as you say the mental image of me has already done; how, I cannot see, but it is enough for me that you say so. And the consciousness that I should have been the means of averting evil from you is sweet, unutterably so. May it continue, and strengthen me as it will mysteriously shield you, while we are far apart. My Laurence! my ideal!—yes, you are that; the very moment my eyes first met the firm full gaze of yours I recognized it. I knew what you were, and my heart went out to you."
The blood surged hotly, in a dark flush, beneath Laurence Stanninghame's bronzed face, as he pictured the full force and passion of those parting utterances murmured into his ear instead of confided onlyto cold, inanimate paper; then the demon of cynicism ingrained within him came uppermost with hateful and haunting suggestions:
"She is safe? Yes. But those words were penned more than two years ago. More than two years ago! That is a long time for one in the full glow of her glorious youth. More than two years ago! And in the joy and delight of living, what charm has the memory—the daily fading memory—of the absent for such as she? Think of it, oh, fool, not yet free from the shackles of the last illusion! Think of circumstances, of surroundings, of temperament, above all, of such a temperament as hers! Is your mature knowledge of life to go for nothing that you are so easily fooled? Ha, Ha!"
Thus laughed the demon voice in mocking gibe. But he—no, he would not listen; he would stifle it. Those words were the outcome of one love—the love of a lifetime, and nothing less.
Suddenly, with multifold splash, and a great winnowing of wings, a flight of cranes and egrets arose from the bank some little distance farther down. Dark forms were moving among the reeds. All the instincts of a constant familiarity with peril alert within him, Laurence had in a moment replaced the case and its contents. His Express was grasped in readiness as he peered forth eagerly from his place of concealment. He was the crafty, ruthless slaver once more.
Then the expression, stealthy, resolute, which his discovery had evoked, faded, giving way to one of half-interested curiosity, as he saw that the potentialenemies—more or less redoubtable assailants—were merely a few small boys, wandering along the reed-fringed bank, jabbering light-heartedly as they strolled.
Suddenly there was a splash, a smothered cry, and a loud burst of shrill laughter. The sooty imps were dancing and capering with glee, gazing at and chaffing one of their number who had fallen from the bank—high and perpendicular there—into the water among the reeds. But almost as suddenly the cachinations turned to a sharp yell of terror and warning. The reeds swayed in a quivering line of undulation, as though something were moving through them—something swift and mighty and terrible—and so it was. The black boy, who could swim like a fish, had thrown himself clear of the reeds, deeming his chances better in the open water, but after him, its long grisly snout and cruel beady eyes flush with the surface, glided a large crocodile.
Half instinctively the unseen spectator put up his piece, then dropped it again. He might shoot the reptile, but what then? All their plans would be upset—the villages would be alarmed, and his own life greatly jeopardized. Too steep a price by far to pay, to save one wretched little black imp from being devoured by a crocodile, he told himself. The road to wealth did not lie that way; and the cruel sneer that drooped his lips as he lowered his weapon was not good to behold, as he stood up to witness the end of this impromptu hunt, whose quarry was human.
The boys on the bank were shouting and screaming, partly for help, partly in the hope of scaringthe hideous saurian. That wily reptile, however, heeded them not one atom. His great jaws opened and closed with a snap—but not on the crunch of human flesh, not on the crackle of human bones. The wretched little native, with incredible dexterity, had swerved and dived, just eluding the hungry jaws by no more than a hair's breadth. But to what avail?
For the smooth surface of the lagoon was now rippling into long furrow-like waves. Dark objects were gliding through the water with noiseless rapidity, converging on the point where the human quarry had now risen to breathe. More of the dreadful reptiles, with which the lagoons were swarming, had found out there was prey, and were bearing down to obtain their share. From his concealment, Laurence could see it all—the glistening of the hideous snouts, the round woolly head and staring, terror-stricken eyeballs of the miserable little victim. Then, with a wild, piercing, soul-curdling shriek, the latter disappeared, and there arose to the surface a boil of foam, bubbling upon the slimy water in a bright red stain. Below, in the depths, the crocodiles were rending asunder their unexpected prey.
"The moral of that episode," said the concealed spectator to himself, as he turned away, "is that little boys should not play too near the bank. No, there is yet another—the incredibly short space of time in which the refined and civilized being can turn into a stony-hearted demon; and the causes which accomplish such transmogrification are twain—the parting with all his illusions, and the parting with all his cash."
These ruminations were cut short in a manner that was violent, not to say alarming. Two spears whizzed past him with a vicious, angry hiss, one burying itself deep in the stem of the tree-fern just behind him, the other flying into empty space, but grazing his ear by very few inches indeed. Then, in the wild, barking, hoarse-throated yell, blood-curdling in its note of hate and fury, Laurence Stanninghame realized that he was in a tight place—a very tight place.
Ten or a dozen tall savages were advancing through the somewhat sparse scrub. Yielding to a first impulse of self-preservation, Laurence, quick as thought, stepped behind the stem of the tree-fern. Then he peered forth.
His first glance, keen and quick, took in every detail. His assailants were fine warrior-like men, ferocious looking, in great crested headgear of plumes. Their bodies were adorned with cow-hair circlets, but, save for a short kilt of cat's-tails and hide, they were quite unclad. They carried large shields of the Zulu pattern, and a sheaf of gleaming spears—some light, others heavy and strong with the blade like a cutlass.
Who, what could they be? he wondered. They were too fine and stately of aspect—with their lofty, commanding brows, and clear, full glance—to belong to any of the tribes around. They were not Wangoni—they wore too striking a look to come of even that fine race. Who could they be?
His conjectures on that head, rapid as they were, ceased abruptly, for a perfect volley of spears came whizzing about him, several burying their heads deep within the stem of the tree-fern. Well indeed forhim that he had so rapidly placed even that slight rampart between himself and his enemies.
Deeming parley better than fight, under the circumstances, Laurence began quickly upon them in a mixture of Swahili and Zulu, declaring that he could be no enemy to them or to their race. But a loud mocking laugh drowned his words; and, seeing that the savages had suddenly half crouched behind their shields for a charge, his quick, resourceful brain grasped the situation at once. A puff of smoke, a jet of flame from behind the tree-fern. One of the warriors fell forward on his shield, beating the earth with his great limbs in the throes of death.
They had hardly reckoned upon this. Crouching low, now they glide away among the scrub, keeping well within cover. But that solitary, determined man, flattened there against the tree-fern, draws no hope from this. Their manœuvre is a simple one enough. They are going to enfilade the position. Surrounded on all sides, and by such foes as these, where will he be? for he has no cover.
But in Laurence Stanninghame's stern eyes there is a lurid battle-glow, a very demon light. His enemies will have his life, but they will purchase it at a long price. A dead silence now reigns, and through it he can hear the stealthy rustle made by his foes in their efforts to surround him. Were he in the comparative security of cover, or behind a rampart of any sort, he might hope, by a superhuman effort of quick firing, to hold them back. As it is, he dare not move from behind his tree, suspecting an intention to draw him thence.
The sun flames blood-red upon the lagoon and upon a flight of flamingoes winnowing above the mirror-like surface, and, as though the situation were not deadly and desperate enough, the shimmer of light and water has, even in that brief glance, brought a spot in front of his eyes, at the moment when, if ever, his sight should be at its clearest and quickest. The odds against him are indeed terrible. He can hardly hope to come through; yet to his assailants it well may prove the dearest victory they have ever won.
A dark body, creeping among the scrub—just a glimpse and nothing more. His piece is at his shoulder, and the trigger is pressed. He has not missed—of that he is sure. But the echoes of his shot are swallowed up, drowned in a hundred other echoes reverberating upon the dim silence of the scrub.
Echoes? No. The screech and tear of missiles very near to his own head, the smoke, the jets of flame from half a hundred different points—all this is sufficient to show that these are no echoes. His own people have come up. He is rescued, but only just in the nick of time.
"Look out," he shouts in stentorian tones. "Don't fire this way. Hazon—Holmes, I'm here! Keep the fools in hand. They are blazing at me."
But the crash of the volley drowns his voice, and the scrub is alive with swarming natives armed with firelocks of every description. Yet, above the volley and the savage shouts, Laurence can hear the hoarse, barking yell, can descry the forms of his late enemies—such as are left of them—as they flee, leaping andbounding, zigzagging with incredible velocity and address, to avoid the hail of bullets which is poured after them.
He can realize something more—something which sends through his whole being a cold shudder of dismay and despair. Not his own people are these otherwise so opportune arrivals. Not his own people, but—the inhabitants of the villages his own people are on their way to raid—fierce and savage cannibals by habit, but with physique which will furnish excellent slaves. He has literally fallen from the frying-pan into the fire.
How he curses his raw folly in making his presence known! But for this he might have slipped away unnoticed during the scrimmage. Now they come crowding up, brandishing their weapons and yelling hideously. Although inferior both in aspect and stature to those they have just defeated, these barbarians are formidable enough; terror-striking their wildly ferocious mien. Many of them, too, have filed teeth, which imparts to their hideous countenances the most fiend-like appearance.
Is it that in the apparently fearless attitude, the stern, even commanding glance of this solitary white man, there is something that overawes them? It may be so, for they stop short in their hostile demonstrations and commence a parley. Yet not altogether does Laurence Stanninghame feel relieved, for a sudden thought surges through his brain which causes a shade of paleness to sweep over his firm, bronzed countenance. What if this were but a scheme to get him into their power? What if he were not sufferedto die fighting, to fall into their hands alive? Why, then, his fate was certain—certain and inexpressibly horrible. He would be butchered like a calf—butchered and eaten—by these repulsive wretches. Such would be his end. Now, however, to make the best of the situation!
But little can he make of their tongue. Then he tries them in Swahili. Ah! several of them have a smattering of that. They have come to his aid at a critical moment, he puts it—he is willing therefore to call them friends. Yet it was a pity they had. He had already killed two of his assailants and was prepared to kill them all, one after another. It was only a question of time. After all, if anything, the new arrivals had rather spoiled his sport.
These stared. The tone was one of patronage, of condescension. This white man was but one; he was alone, and in their power, yet he spoke to them as a great chief might speak. Yet, was he but one? Was he alone or were many others not far off? Perceptibly their own replies took on a respectful air.
The while, Laurence kept every sense on the alert, indeed even to its uttermost tension. Was this parley designed to keep him preoccupied while others stole up treacherously to strike him down from behind? To guard against this idea he stepped boldly forth from the tree-fern and advanced towards the half-threatening crowd.
"Where are those we have slain?" he said. "Let us examine them."
"Yonder," answered some in a wandering tone,while others on the outskirts of the crowd scowled and muttered.
Leisurely, and now moving actually among these people, did Laurence fare forth to look upon the bodies of his late assailants. The thoroughly bold and fearless line he had adopted had told, as he was all but sure it would. These wild barbarians, armed to the teeth, had only to stretch forth a hand and slay him, yet somehow they refrained.
The slain warriors were lying as they fell, and even in death Laurence could not but admire their noble proportions, and the set and martial expression of their countenances. Six lay dead, while another, sorely wounded, was promptly beheaded by the new arrivals. These, their savage instincts all afire, set to work to hack the heads off each corpse; then, tying grass ropes around the ankles, the trunks were dragged away to the village.
To the latter now they invited Laurence. To hesitate might be an act of weakness sufficient to cause his slaughter. To acquiesce, on the other hand, was it not an act of unexampled foolhardiness thus to place himself more absolutely within the power of these savage cannibals? His policy of boldness had availed so far; it would not do to break down at the last moment. So he accepted without a shade of hesitation.
"How is your tribe named?" he asked, as they proceeded along.
"Wajalu," replied the man who had done chief spokesman, rather a good-looking native, with almost a Zulu cast of countenance.
"And the head man of yonder village, who is he?"
"I am he. I—Mgara," was the reply, with a satisfied smile.
"And those we have slain, they seemed fine fighters. Of what race were they?"
"Ba-gcatya."
Laurence looked grave, but said nothing. Strange rumours, mysterious and vague, had reached him already—rumours relating to an immensely powerful tribe inhabiting the dark and unexplored country away to the north, whose raids were extending more and more, whose wrath fell alike upon all—upon Arab slave-hunter and the prey sought by the latter—a Zulu-speaking tribe said to have taken its origin in some hardly recorded exodus in the days of Tshaka—Zulu alike in its habits and customs, and in the despotism of its ruler. This nation was known as the Abagcatya or Ba-gcatya, "The People of the Spider." Hazon, too, believed in its existence, and Hazon was a first-class authority on such subjects. And now the warriors who had attacked him, and upon whom the tables were so strangely turned, were Zulu in aspect, and bore Zulu shields. The thing began to look serious. What if that handful of warriors was the outpost of a hugeimpi? Would not the vengeance of the latter be fearful and complete?
And, indeed, time was when Laurence Stanninghame's blood would have boiled with rage and disgust at the indignities offered to the remains of these noble-looking warriors. The trunks dragged along by the heels seemed nothing now but a bleeding mass. The heads, too, stuck upon spear points, were bornealoft above the rabble. To them were all sorts of mockeries addressed.
Now, however, it was different. The hardening process had been, if anything, all too complete. A man had his hands full even if occupied solely in taking care of himself—this had become the sum total of his creed.
As they drew near the village, the Wajalu set up the most hideously discordant war-song he had ever heard in his life. They were met in the gate by a crowd of women howling and blowing horns, and otherwise adding to the horrific tumult. These, on beholding the stranger, imagined him a prisoner, and began clamouring for his death, pointing to the bloodstained place of slaughter where such were wont to be immolated.
And then once more, hearing the shout of demoniacal laughter which arose from some of the fighting men, noting a ferociously sardonic grin upon not a few faces, Laurence felt his former misgivings all return. Accustomed as he was to perilous situations, to horrifying sights, the strain upon his nerves was becoming painfully intense. Fortunate, indeed, for him that those nerves were now hardened to the cold consistency of cast steel by almost daily trial.
"Men of the Wajalu," he began, in a decisive, commanding voice, "well is it for all here that I am among you this day as a friend and guest, for, but for that, this village was doomed. You know not who I am, but you shall know in time. Then you will know that but for my presence here to-day the spear and the slave-yoke would have been your portion, thatof your village the flames. Now I give you your lives."
The words, hurriedly rendered to those who could not understand by those who could, perhaps more the haughty indifference of his tone, his bearing, his appearance in general, hard and determined, overawed the crowd. No further voice was raised against him. Their advances of hospitality became even profuse.
He was shown to the best hut. But before he entered it he could not avoid seeing the bodies of his late assailants in process of dismemberment as though they had been slaughtered cattle, and, inured as he was to horrible and sickening sights, never had he been conscious of so overpowering a feeling of repulsion as now. The cannibal atrocities of these human beasts, the glowering heads stuck all over the stockade,—the latest addition thereto being those of the slain Ba-gcatya,—the all-pervading influence of death brooding over this demoniacal haunt, even as the ever-present circlings of carrion birds high in mid-air—all this weighed upon his mind until he could have blown out his own brains for sheer horror and loathing.
But upon this dark, enshrouding shadow, piercing, partly dispelling it, came a ray of searching light—sweet, golden, penetrating. The vision of his midday slumbers—Lilith. But a few hours had gone by since that dream, and within them he had fought fiercely for his life; and now, in this hell-haunt, the sweet entrancement of it came back to charm away,as with a hallowed spell, the black horrors that hung over his soul as though on vulture wing.
Presently Mgara entered, followed by people bearing food—cooked goat-flesh and millet and plantains. From the smoking meat Laurence recoiled with a loathing he could hardly repress. It was too suggestive of the foul and fearful feast proceeding outside; and even when the chief, with a furtive half-smile, assured him he might safely partake of it, yet he could not touch it, contenting himself with the other fare, cereal and vegetable.
After some further talk Mgara withdrew, and Laurence, left alone, gave his meditations the rein once more. Never had he loathed the sinister occupation upon which he was embarked as he did now, possibly because the term of the undertaking was nearing its end. "I predict you will come back with what you want," Lilith had said, and her words had been fully verified. He had gained riches—even beyond his wildest dreams, but how he had gained them—trafficking in human flesh and blood, yea, even human life—she should never know. It seemed to him as though he were already returning with that which should place all the world at his feet.
But for once he seemed to forget that he had not yet returned—not yet. And as the drums and yelling of the barbarous orgy outside gradually sank into the silence of night, even that, strange to say, failed to remind him.
Not much sleep did Laurence get that night—such, indeed, as he obtained being of the "with one eye open" order. Simple trust in anybody or anything was not one of his failings, as we think we have shown; wherefore having carefully scrutinized the plastered walls of his rude quarters, he took the precaution to secure the wicker door from the inside, and lay down with his Express, so covering the same that but the very slightest movement of the hand would be needed on his part in order to rake from stem to stern whosoever should be so ill-advised as to essay a stealthy ingress.
Still more would he have applauded his own foresight in taking these precautions could he have known that a large portion of the night was spent by his "entertainers" keenly debating the expediency of treacherously putting him to death. Here, it was urged, was an opportunity such as might never again come their way. Here was one of the leaders of that dreaded band of slave-hunters—one whose very name was a terror and a scourge. Here was this man actually in their hands. It was in their power to slay him without the smallest risk to themselves. Let them not miss such an opportunity of setting up his head above their gates. As for his party, now thatits existence was known, they could surprise it, and slaughter every man it contained. They, the Wajalu, were numerous, and had good fire-weapons, and knew how to use them. Why should they not rid the land of this terror? It was in their power to do so.
This sounded all very plausible; many tales do, until their other side is told. And the other side was unfolded by the head man, Mgara, and others, much to this effect: The slave-hunters were more numerous than many there imagined. They had been reinforced by a large body of Wangoni—fierce and formidable fighters. To surprise and overwhelm such a force would be impossible, and in the event of failure what would their own fate be? Moreover, it was certain that the slavers were much better armed than the Wajalu. Their best policy would be to treat the man well; he had already given what was as good as an assurance of his protection. These counsels prevailed.
And soon the wisdom thereof was made manifest, for with earliest dawn one of their scouts came running in with the news that the slave-hunters were approaching; that they were in great numbers, and mostly armed with rifles; that it was too late for retreat, in that a large detachment had already gained a position which was practically such as to surround the village.
The effect of this news was to stamp with an expression of the most terror-stricken despair the countenance of every man who heard it. But Mgara, remembering the words of their white "guest," hurried to the hut where the latter was sleeping.
Yet as the head man approached the door with a quick deferential word of greeting, Laurence Stanninghame was wide awake. The talk outside, the rapid note of fear underlying the tone, had not escaped him, and even though he understood not a word of their talk among themselves he knew what these people wanted of him. And the situation looked serious, for he felt far less confident of his ability to redeem his half-implied pledge than when, moved by the first instincts of self-preservation, he had given the same.
Well, and what then? The extinction of this horde of cannibal barbarians was a mere trifle, a drop in the bucket, when looked at beside other dark and ruthless deeds which he had witnessed, and even actually aided in. But hard, pitiless, utterly impervious to human suffering as he had become, there was one point in Laurence Stanninghame's character—a weak point, he regarded it—which he had never succeeded in eradicating. He could not forget or ignore a good turn. These people, monstrous, repulsive as they were in his sight, had saved his life—twice indeed—the first time unconsciously from the Ba-gcatya, the second time from themselves. They might have slain him barbarously at almost any moment—he was but one among a number; yet they had not, but instead had treated him hospitably and well. He was resolved, at any risk, to save them.
Mgara, entering, lost no time in making known his errand.
"O stranger guest, whom we have treated as a friend," he began, "save us from the slave-yoke, andthe guns and spears of your people, for they are upon us already." And rapidly he narrated the tidings brought in by the scouts.
"I will do what I can, Mgara," answered Laurence. "Listen. All your people must retire within the huts; not one must be seen. Further, two of your men must bear a token from me to El Khanac, my brother-chief, who leads yonder host, and that at once. Now, call those two men."
Swift of resource, Laurence picked up a flat piece of wood and, scraping it smooth with his knife, wrote upon it in pencil:
"I owe these people my life. Keep ours in hand until we meet."
"These are the messengers, Mgara?" he went on, as the head man returned accompanied by two men. "Are they reliable, and above all, fearless?"
"They are both, Sidi," answered the chief, now very deferential. "One is my son, the other my brother's son."
"Good. Let them now get a piece of white flaxen cloth, and bind it and this token to a staff. Then let them seek out El Khanac yonder."
In a moment this was done, and, bearing the impromptu white flag and the writing on the board, the two young men started off into the scrub.
"Retire now into your houses, Mgara, you and all your people. I alone will stand within the gate, and maybe it will be well with you."
The Wajalu, who had been hanging on every word, now hastened to obey; nevertheless there was terror and dejection in every face. And their thoughts weremuch the same as those of their would-be deliverer. Had he the power to make good his word?
The hot morning hours dragged slowly by, and still no sign of attack. The village was a deserted place, in its brooding, death-like silence, so still, so complete as to render distinctly audible the sweep of the wings of carrion birds circling aloft. The severed heads grinned hideously from the stockade, and the unearthly molten stillness of the silent noon was such as to get upon the nerves of the ordinary watcher. But he who now stood there had no nerves—not in a matter of this kind. His experiences had been such as to kill and crush them out of all being.
Ha! What was this? The crows and vultures, which, emboldened by the deathly silence, had been circling nearer and nearer to the tree tops, suddenly and with one accord shot upward, now seeming mere specks in the blue ether. Then the silence was broken in appalling fashion. Rending the air in a terrific note of savagery and blood-thirst, there burst forth the harsh, hissing war-yell of the Wangoni.
It came from the forest edge on the farther side of the village. Laurence realized, with vexation and concern, that his merciful plan would be extremely difficult to carry out. That these ferocious auxiliaries should be allowed to initiate the attack he had not reckoned upon; and now to restrain them would be a herculean task.
"Back, back!" he shouted, meeting the crowd of charging savages who, shield and spear uplifted, were bearing down in full career upon the village.
In the headlong, exciting moment of their chargethey hardly recognized him. Laurence Stanninghame's life hung upon a hair. Then, with a great burst of laughter, mocking, half defiant, they surged past him. They "saw red," and no power on earth seemed able to stop those human wolves now rushing upon their helpless prey.
"Back, back!" thundered Laurence again. "The village is dead, I tell you. It is the abode of death!"
This told. Barbarians have a shrinking horror of infectious disease. Thoughts of smallpox, cholera, what not, arose in the minds of these. No other consideration on earth could have restrained that charge, yet this one did. They stopped short.
"Lo! the stillness, the silence," went on Laurence, pointing to the lifeless village. "Would you, too, travel the voiceless and weaponless path of death?"
But mutterings both loud and deep went through the Wangoni ranks. What was this? They had been ordered to charge—been signalled to charge, and now they were forbidden to enter the village. "El Afà" (the serpent) had been absent from the expedition, and now turned up here, alone. Savages are ever suspicious, and these were no exception to the rule of their kind.
"Whau, what does it mean?" half sneered their leader, scowling resentfully upon Laurence as the warriors crowded around, growling like a pack of baffled wolves. "Had we not better send some in to see if these dogs are indeed all dead?"
"Not so, Mashumbwe," was the unconcerned reply. "Tarry until the others arrive, then will we act together."
But a furious clamour arose at the words. The Wangoni did not entirely believe the explanation; and to further their doubts there now arose from the inside of the huts the puling wail of infants which the mothers had not been entirely able to stifle.
"Au, we will add those to the death number, at least," said the chief, giving the signal to his followers to advance.
"Not so!" said Laurence decisively. "Hearken, Mashumbwe, you are chief of your own people, but I am chief of all—of all! Not a man stirs until El Khanac comes up. Not a man, do you hear?"
Mashumbwe tossed back his ringed head, and his eyes glared. He was a tall, fine savage, with all the pride of mien inseparable from his rank and Zulu blood. Thus they stood, the savage and the white man, looking into each other's eyes; the one in a blaze of haughty anger, the other cool, resolute, and absolutely unflinching. How it would end Heaven alone knew.
But now the very thing that Laurence had been longing for happened. A hurried murmur ran through the Wangoni lines. The main body of the slave-hunters had emerged from the scrub, and had quietly surrounded the village. Laurence was satisfied. He had gained time so far, and with it his object.
"What astonishing freak is this, Stanninghame?" said Hazon, who, having taken in the situation at a glance, was promptly at his colleague's side, displaying, too, the piece of pencilled board. "What becomes of our pact when such a consideration as thiscomes in?" he continued, meaningly tapping the inscription on the board. "Have we obtained all we wanted on those terms up till now, or not?"
"No, we haven't; but now, having obtained almost all we wanted, we can afford to do this for once. If it had been your life instead of mine these people had saved twice, Hazon, I would willingly have spared theirs; now will you do less for me?"
"But it will breed a mutiny among our people," said Hazon doubtfully, with a half glance at the crowd of scowling Wangoni.
"Oh, a mutiny! By all means. We shall know how to deal with that, as we did before."
It seemed as though such knowledge were about to be called into requisition, for the announcement that all this "property" was to be relinquished absolutely was received by the more important section of the slave-hunters with a sullen silence more eloquent even that the wolfish growls of the Wangoni. The latter's disappointment lay in the fact that they were balked in giving vent to their instincts of sheer savagery—the delight of plunder and massacre. That of the former, however, was a more weighty factor to reckon with; for the smatter of civilization in the Arab and Swahili element had brought with it the commercial instinct of cupidity. It speaks volumes, therefore, for the ascendency which these two resolute white men had set up over their wild and lawless following, that the latter should have contented itself with mere sullen obedience.
Having gained his point Laurence returned within the village, and, calling Mgara, suggested that someof the people should carry forth food to their unwelcome visitors.
"I fear it may leave scarcity in your midst," he added; "but well-fed men are in better mood than hungry ones, Mgara, and are you not spared the slave-yoke and the spear?"
The head man, with many deferential expressions of gratitude, agreed, and soon a file of women and boys were told off, bringing goats and millet and rice for the slave-hunters. As they passed tremblingly among the ranks of the Wangoni the latter handled their great spears meaningly, and with much the same expression of countenance as a cat might wear when contemplating an inaccessible bird cage.
"Ho, dog!" cried Mashumbwe, as a youth passed before him without making obeisance. "Do you dare stand before me—before me! thou spawn of these man-eating jackals? Lo! lie prostrate forever." And with the words he half threw, half thrust his great spear into the unfortunate lad's body. The blood spurted forth in a great jet, and, staggering, the boy fell.
"Au!And am I to be defiled with the blood of such as this," growled the chief, upon whom several red drops had squirted. "Let that carrion be removed."
Several of the Wangoni sprang forward, and, as the quivering body was dragged away, these savages gave vent to their pent-up ferocity by stabbing it again and again. Having tasted blood they rolled their eyes around in search of further victims. But the remaining Wajalu had withdrawn in terror: and well for allconcerned that it was so, otherwise the Wangoni, inspired by the example of their chief, would certainly have commenced a massacre which even the prestige and authority of Hazon and Laurence combined would have been powerless to quell. But there was no one outside to begin upon, and, though a truculent, unruly crowd, their interests in the long run lay in submitting to the authority of the white chiefs.
So the Wajalu rejoiced much, if tremblingly, as the last of the dreaded host disappeared. For good or for ill their village was spared—spared to continue its most revolting forms of savagery and cannibalism and parricide—spared for good or for ill in that it had entertained an angel unawares in the person of that hard, pitiless, determined slave-hunter, Laurence Stanninghame.
"Well, I'm uncommonly glad I was out of that affair yesterday, Stanninghame. But it isn't like you, letting those poor devils off, eh?"
Thus Holmes, as the two were leisurely pursuing their way, somewhat on the rear flank of the slave-party.
"I don't know. You see they let me off, and I didn't want to be outdone in civility even by a lot of scurvy dogs who eat each other. There was no feeling about the matter."
Before the other could pursue the subject, the sound of faint groans, and pleading in an unknown tongue, was heard just ahead. With it, too, the sound of blows.
"Some devilish work going forward again," muttered Holmes, with savage disgust.
"You can't make omelettes without breaking eggs," was the indifferent reply. And then they came upon a not entirely unfamiliar scene.
On the ground crouched three human figures, wretched-looking and emaciated to the last degree. Disease and exhaustion had overpowered them, and they were begging to be left to die. Standing over them in threatening attitude was Lutali, with some half-dozen of the slavers.
"They are too far gone to feel the whip," Lutali was saying. "Clearly they are of no further use. You, Murad, shorten me the shadow of yonder dog. We shall see."
The man named, a savage-looking ruffian, stepped forward, grinning with delight. Just as he was swinging up his scimitar, Holmes burst forth:
"Hold on, Lutali! Give the poor devil another show."
Half turning his head at this interruption, there was that look upon the hawk-like features of the Arab which at times so strangely resembled Hazon. His keen eyes darted haughty reproof at Holmes, for he was a sort of supercargo of the slave department, and relished not this interference. Then, turning back, he once more gave the signal. Down flashed the great blade. There was a dull swooshing thud, and the headless trunk was deluging the earth.
The effect, however, upon the other two exhausted wretches was magical. With a despairing effort they raised themselves up and staggered on, to the accompaniment of not a few blows by way of recognition of their malingering. Lutali, who had uttered no word, and whose impassive countenance had not moved a feature, stalked gravely on.
"Why could we not have prevented this?" burst forth Holmes, whom a sort of morbid fascination seemed to root to the spot.
"Because it would have been the very acme of insanity to attempt such a thing. Lutali, in common with the rest, is in far too ugly a mood, after yesterday, to be fooled with needlessly. Besides, all thatsentiment is simply thrown away. These people, remember, are atrocious brutes, who eat their own fathers and mothers. It is positively a work of charity to enslave them. Once they are off the march they are fairly well treated,—better, in fact, than they treat each other—and, of course, no more cannibalism."
"That may be. But I wish to Heaven I could blot out these two years as though they had never been. The recollection of the horrors one has been through will haunt me for life. I feel like blowing my brains out in sheer disgust. Why did I ever come?"
It was not the first time Holmes had burst forth in this fashion, as we have shown. Laurence looked keenly at him.
"There is a worse thing to haunt one's life than recollection," he said, "and that is anticipation."
"Of what?" asked Holmes shortly.
The other touched the muzzle of his rifle, then his own forehead.
"It's that—or this," he said, pointing to the ghastly trunk and the severed head which lay before them. "You don't suppose I should have adopted this sweet trade from choice, I suppose? No. Hard necessity, my dear chap. If anybody has to go under—and somebody always has to—I prefer that it shall not be me."
Holmes made no reply for a while, so they left the spot, walking in silence. Then Laurence went on:
"Now we are on the subject, I don't know that you would have come out any the better had we left you behind at Johannesburg. For you were going thewrong way. You were a precious sight too fond of hanging around bars, and that sort of thing grows. In fact, you were more than once a trifle—shall we say 'muddled.' Not to put too fine a point upon it, you were on your way to the deuce. I know it, for I've seen it so often before, and you know it too."
"I believe you're right there," assented Holmes.
"Well, then, we owe our first duty to ourselves; wherefore, my soft-hearted young friend, it is better to spend a year or two raking in a fortune and ameliorating the lot of humanity, than to die in a state of soak, and a disused shaft, on or around the Rand, even as did Pulman the day before we left."
"I don't believe that same fortune will do us any good," urged Holmes gloomily. "There is the curse of blood upon it."
"The curse of my grandmother," laughed the other.
There was no affectation about Laurence Stanninghame's indifference. It was perfectly genuine. Strong-nerved constitutionally, callous, hard-hearted through stress of circumstances, such sights as that just witnessed told not one atom upon him. In the sufferings of the miserable wretches he saw only a lurid alternative—his own. In them, toiling along, wearily, dejectedly, beneath the chain or yoke, he saw himself, toiling, grinding, at some sordid and utterly repellent form of labour, for a miserable pittance; no ray of light, no redeeming rest or enjoyment to sweeten life until that life should end. In them, cowering, writhing, beneath the driver's brutal lash, he saw himself, ever lashed and stung by the torturing consciousness of what might have been, by therecollection of what had been. Or did they fall exhausted, fainting, to die, or to undergo decapitation to insure that such exhaustion should not open even a feeble possibility of escape, there too, he saw himself sinking, borne down by the sheer blank hopelessness of fate, taking refuge in the Dark Unknown, his end the grave of the suicide. It was himself or them, and he preferred that it should be them. Preyer or preyed upon—such was the iron immutable law of life, from man in his highest development to the minutest of insects; and with this law he was but complying, not in wanton cruelty, but in cold, passive ruthlessness.
Further, the sufferings of these people were only transitory. They would be much better off when the journey was ended and they were disposed of—better off indeed than many a free person in civilized and Christian lands. Besides, such races as these, low down as they were in the scale of humanity, suffered but little. It needs imagination, refinement, to accentuate suffering. To anything approaching such attributes, these were utter strangers. They were mere animals. Men dealt in sheep and cattle, in order to live, in horses and other beasts of burden, why not in these, who were even lower than the higher animals?
This theory of their sinister occupation Hazon thoroughly indorsed.
"Depend upon it, Stanninghame," he said, "ours is the right view to take of it—the only view. This is 'a world of plunder and prey,' as Tennyson puts it, and we have got to prey or be preyed upon. You, for instance, seem to have fulfilled the latter rôle,hitherto, and it seems only right you should have your turn now. To cite the latest instance, all this rotten scrip and market-rigging finished you off, and what was that but rascality?"
"Of course, I've been plundered, swindled, all along the line, ever since I can remember. I'm tired of that d——d respectability, Hazon. It doesn't pay. It never has paid. This, however, does."
The other smiled significantly at the word.
"Respectability—yes," he said. "Look at your type of success, your self-made man, swelling out of his white waistcoat in snug self-complacency, your pattern British merchant, your millionaire financier, what is he but a slave-dealer, a slave-driver, a blood-sucker. What has become of your little all, swamped in those precious Rand companies, Stanninghame? Gone to bloat more unimpeachable white waistcoats; gone to add yet more pillars to the temple of pattern respectability."
"That's so," assented Laurence, with something between a sneer and a laugh, knocking the ashes out of his pipe. "Yet that same crowd of respectable swindlers would yelp in horror at us and our enterprise. 'Piratical,' they'd call it, eh? A hanging matter!"
"Swindlers—no. Swindler is English for a convicted person. Yet the percentage of the props and pillars of financial success and mercantile respectability who, in the self-candour and secrecy of their sleepless hours, are honestly unable to recall to mind one or more occasions when Portland, or Dartmoor, or Simonstown, or the Kowie loomed more than near,cannot be a vast one; which, for present purposes, may be taken to mean that if you have got to make money you must make it anyhow, or not at all—'anyhow' covering such methods as are involved in the conventional term 'rascality.' If you have got it you can run as straight as you like. We haven't got it—at least not enough of it yet—and so we are making it, and, like the rest of the world, making it anyhow. There's the whole case in a nutshell, Stanninghame."
"Why, of course. But, if only we could bring Holmes round to that pre-eminently sensible standpoint! I never could have believed the fellow would turn out such an ass. I am more than sorry, Hazon, that I should have influenced you to bring him along."
"Oh, Holmes is young, and hardly knows the meaning of the term 'hard experience,' as we know it. Still, in his way, he's useful enough, and first-rate in a fight; and when he comes to bank his share he'll forget to feel over particular as to how he acquired it. That's mere ordinary human nature, and Holmes is far from being an abnormal unit."
"No, but he still affects a conscience. What if he goes back and takes on that blue-eyed girl he was smitten with, and, turning soft, incontinently gives us away?"
"Areyouon the croak, Stanninghame? That's odd. Here, how's your pulse? Let's time it." And Hazon reached out his hand.
"Well, yes; it is unusual. But it's d——d hot, and the steaminess of it depresses me at times," returned Laurence, with a queer, reckless laugh.