Chapter Eleven.
A Midnight Foray.
There was one in whose eyes Haviland, fallen from his pedestal, was on a still higher plane even than he had been before; and that one was Mpukuza, otherwise Anthony, sneeringly known among the ill-disposed as “Haviland’s chum.” With the entire and unswerving loyalty of his race towards the object of its hero-worship, the Zulu boy looked upon his god’s misfortune as his own misfortune, and was not slow to proclaim the fact in season and out of season. Any fellow within measurable dimensions of his own size who professed satisfaction within Cetchy’s hearing had got to fight, while more than one thrashing came his way from bigger fellows, towards whom his championing of his hero’s cause took, perforce, the form of cheek. As for the prime author of the said misfortune, it would have been astonishing to note the result upon the reverend but stern Doctor’s mind, could he either have heard or understood the awful threats and imprecations muttered at him in the liquid Zulu language whenever he came within view of Anthony.
The latter, since he had been at Saint Kirwin’s, had made his way very fairly well. Acting upon an earnest and wise warning from the missionary who had placed him there, the masters had refrained from taking undue notice of him, and so spoiling him, as perhaps might otherwise have been the case, and being thus left to make his own way, he had made it, as we have said. And he was growing taller and stronger, with all the fine physique of his race. Lithe, active, enduring, he was as hard as steel; nor would it be very long before he might be in a condition to turn the tables on Jarnley and Co., quite independently of his hero and protector.
To whom one day he sidled up, and opened conversation this way:
“You not sick of being always in?”
“You ass, Cetchy! What d’you mean by asking such an idiotic question?” was the excusably irritable retort.
“Au! Then why you not go out?”
“Look here, Cetchy. If you’re trying to make a fool of me, you’ll promptly find you’ve got the wrong pig by the ear. What are you driving at? Eh?”
The other looked quickly around. The two were alone.
“I not make fool. Ishinga ’nkulu not let you go out in day. Au! go out at night. Why not?”
We regret to say that by the above epithet—which being interpreted means “big rascal”—this descendant of generations of fighting savages was of late wont to refer to the Reverend the Headmaster of Saint Kirwin’s.
“No one see you,” he went on. “Quite easy. I go with you; we find lots of nests. We go to Hangman’s Wood again. Plenty of time. All night long.”
“Now, Cetchy, you young ass, how are you going to find nests in the dark?”
“Not dark. Plenty moon. Besides,” and here he looked round once more, and said something in a quick, hurried whisper. Haviland started, and his face flushed red with eagerness and excitement.
“The very thing,” he exclaimed. “By George, won’t we have fun? But I’m not so sure about the other fellows in the room. Some of them hated me while I was a prefect. What if they sneak?”
“They not sneak,” tranquilly replied the other. “No; they not sneak. I know.”
Then the two plotters put their heads together and talked a good while, but always cautiously. If any one came within earshot, why they were only talking about bird-nesting.
We said that Haviland occupied a smaller room at the end of the big dormitory, the said room containing ten other fellows, and from this it had not been deemed necessary to shift him at the time of his suspension; indeed, the same order prevailed therein as before, so great the force of habit and his own prestige. Now, a night or two after the above conversation, just before “lights out” time, Haviland remarked meaningly:
“Any sneaks here?”
The boys stared, then tittered. What on earth was Haviland driving at? they were all thinking.
“Don’t stand grinning like a Cheshire cat, Smithson, you young ape,” said the ex-prefect. “Why don’t you answer, all of you? Are there any sneaks here?”
“No,” came the unanimous answer; while one or two added, “Of course not. Why?”
“Ha! Any fellow sneak, I kill him!” said Mpukuza, otherwise Anthony, in would-be blood-curdling tones, and rolling the whites of his eyeballs hideously.
“There’s no need for that, Cetchy,” said Haviland, judiciously. “I know none of these fellows are sneaks.”
“Of course not,” they repeated. “But why, Haviland?”
“You’ll see, or, rather, you won’t see, for you’ll all be asleep. You’ll all be asleep, d’you hear?” he added significantly.
He turned out the gas. Not for another hour could he begin operations, and all he and his accomplice had to do was to sit and wait.
Ten of the occupants of the room were pretending to be asleep, except two or three who, wearied with waiting to see what was going to happen, actually were so. The others noiselessly arose. Both were dressed, but instead of their boots wore light running shoes. Then the other inmates of the dormitory thrilled with excitement and admiration as, peeping furtively from beneath the clothes, they beheld in the moonlight, which streamed into the room, their ex-prefect busily engaged in knotting a cord to the framework of the two iron bedsteads which stood right under the outside window.
This long wing of the school buildings ended here. Without, the chapel wall, buttressed and lofty, extended at right angles to it. Another convenient buttress on the other side of the window screened the corner thus formed, in most effective fashion.
Haviland and his dusky satellite proceeded to pay out the cord. The end just swung clear of the ground, and the height, from twenty-five to thirty feet, was a mere nothing to such practised climbers. Down they went, hand over hand, first one, then the other. Then, taking advantage of the shadows thrown out by the rose bushes that grew outside, they flitted along the chapel wall, then over the fence and into the field beyond.
How good it was to be out again, to move freely over this glorious open country spreading around so still and soft and mysterious in the moonlight! Half hundred fragrant scents seemed to blend and fuse, distilled from grass and bank and hedgerow, upon the pure night air, and mingled with the odour of kine asleep in the pasture meadows. A nightingale “jug-jugged” in an adjacent copse, and was answered by another; a large hare, long-eared and ghostly, sprang out of their way and loped off into misty dimness—but, over all, that sense of freedom, of entire and complete liberty, which a sense of risk, and very real risk, did but add to.
For a keeper would likely be on his beat these moonlight nights, and to encounter one such would be almost fatal. And to-night they had higher game in view than bird-nesting.
“Here it is,” said Mpukuza, diving into a bed of leaves at the bottom of a dry ditch and dragging forth—an air-gun. “Now we have fun. Au!”
Haviland’s hand shook with excitement as he took the weapon. Fun indeed! Wouldn’t they? He was not unpractised in the use of firearms, for on rare and happy occasions when he had visited at the country place of a distant relative he had been taught and encouraged to shoot, and he was passionately fond of the sport. But his opportunities, alas, had been few and far between.
The air-gun was a good one of its kind, and up to a certain distance shot true and hard. The Zulu boy had seen it among the wares of a travelling pedlar during one of his solitary wanderings, and had purchased it for five shillings, it having probably been stolen in the first instance. He had hidden it craftily away, with an eye to just such an adventure as this.
Haviland put in a pellet and fired at nothing in particular. Even the slight twang as he pulled the trigger seemed quite loud in the midnight stillness; but he felt that it would hit hard.
They stole along in the shadow of a hedgerow, Haviland carrying the gun. A covert loomed darkly in front of them. As they entered it stealthily, the flap-flap of startled wood-pigeons set their nerves all tingling, for would not a tale be thereby conveyed in the event of keepers being abroad?
But alas for their reckoning! It was the wrong time of year for night-poaching. The foliage was so thick that they could see nothing. Every tree might have been weighted with roosting pheasants for all the sport that fact would afford them. For some time they went round and round the copse, looking upward, and were just going to give it up when—there in a young ash of scanty leafage, they made out two dark balls silhouetted against the moonlit sky. Controlling his excitement, Haviland took careful aim and pressed the trigger. There was a thud, a flapping of wings, and one of the dark balls fell to earth with a louder thud. There lay at their feet a splendid cock-pheasant. The Zulu boy promptly ended its struggles by a tap on the head with his stick.
“Shoot again,” he whispered. “Shoot again.”
Now at ordinary times Haviland’s sporting instincts were far too true to allow him to find much satisfaction in shooting birds on the roost. But here the night adventure, the secrecy and risk, and, further, the skill required to pick off a bird with a single pellet, and that in a very uncertain light, all went to render the situation intensely exciting. Again he raised the weapon and took careful aim, with the same result as before. Mpukuza capered with delight.
“That enough for to-night,” he whispered. “Now we go and eat him. Come.”
For the speaker had been carefully planning this adventure for some days past, consequently it was not surprising that when the two gained the congenial hiding-place formed by a deep dry ditch with clayey overhanging banks, the whole well concealed by brambles, the materials for a fire were laid and ready, and only wanted lighting. The fireplace was cunningly scooped out of the clay bank, and now, in deft manner known to himself, the Zulu boy managed to light and foster that fire in such wise that it soon consisted of a mass of ardent and glowing charcoal, giving forth little or no smoke. The while the birds had been hastily plucked and cut in pieces, and set on the embers to broil.
It was almost worth while undergoing his long imprisonment to have such glorious fun as this, thought Haviland, as he watched the hissing and sputtering flesh which, but half an hour ago, had been alive and totally unsuspicious of approaching fate. The dry ditch became a sort of cave of romance, an episode in a life of wild adventure. Perhaps some day, at no great distance of time either, such a life might be his. And as the roast went on, his dusky companion told him strange tales of his own country—tales of war, of stirring sights he himself had looked on with childish eyes, of grim legends fraught with mysterious horror; stories, too, of widespread slaughter, and ruthless, unsparing revenge. The listener’s blood was all on fire.
“I say, Cetchy, I would like to go to that country of yours,” he said, half breathlessly. “Perhaps I will one of these days.”
“Ha! you come. We have good fun then. But it’s no longer good country. The English have driven out the king—broken up the people. Ha!”
The first instalment of the broil was ready, and they fell upon it with a will, the while Anthony had raked up the fire and put on as much more of the birds as it would hold.
“Cetchy, old chap, this is splendid,” said Haviland gleefully, as with their pocket-knives they stripped the flesh from the bones, and devoured it with their healthy school appetites. “Why Nick himself can’t get roast pheasant now for love or money, because it’s out of season. Old brute! I’d like to give him a turn on that fire. Eh?”
“Oh yes, make him wriggle on it like Umbelini make the Tonga prisoners I was goin’ to tell about. They go work in diamond mines, come back through Umbelini’s country with plenty money. They no tell where it is, hide it away. He burn them till they tell—most of them never tell; Umbelini burn ’em till they dead. One man tell. Ha!”
The while Haviland had hardly noticed how the other had been allotting all the choicest bits to his share.
“I say,” he said at last, “I never thought you and I would be able to polish off a brace of cock-pheasants to our own cheek. Yet we jolly well nearly have.”
They had. The night air and their natural growing appetites had rendered the feat one of no great difficulty. But it was time to go back. The nights were nearly at their shortest. By two o’clock it would be almost daylight. So they started from their alfresco kitchen and banqueting-room, and, concealing the air-gun and its ammunition, made their way back once more, and neglecting no precaution, shinned up the rope which had been left dangling, and were safe and sound within the dormitory again—the rope being carefully coiled away in Haviland’s box—he about five minutes thereafter being fast asleep, and dreaming that he was plugging a huge cock-pheasant through and through with air-gun pellets, the riddled bird finally taking shape as the Doctor, to his own great and vengeful satisfaction.