Chapter Twenty One.
The First Camp.
“Any alligators in this river, Fanning?”
“Plenty. They won’t interfere with us, though.”
Splash! splash! The horses plunged on, deeper and deeper into the wide drift. Soon the water was up to the saddle-girths.
Renshaw, leading the way—and a pack-horse—tucked up his feet over the saddle behind, an example his companion was not slow to follow. An expanse of yellow, turgid water, at least a hundred and fifty yards wide, lay before them. Below, a labyrinth of green eyots picturesquely studded the surface of the stream. Above, the river flowed round an abrupt bend of red rock wall, sweeping silently and majestically down to the drift which our two adventurers were fording. In front, a high craggy ridge, sheering up in a steep slope, dotted with aloes and a sparse growth of mimosa bush. Behind, a similar ridge, down whose rugged face the two had spent the best part of the afternoon finding a practicable path.
And now it was evening. The setting sun dipped nearer and nearer to the same rocky heights in the west, shedding a scarlet glow upon the smooth surface of the great river, tingeing with fiery effulgence many a bold krantz whose smooth walls rose sheer to the heavens. An indescribably wild and desolate spot, redeemed from absolute savagery by the soft cooing of innumerable doves flitting among the fringe of trees which skirted the bank of the stream.
The drift, though wide, was shallow, and the water came no higher than the saddle-girths. A few minutes more of splashing, and they emerged upon a hard, firm sand-bank.
“The river’s low now, and has been some time,” said Renshaw, looking around. “The time before last I crossed this way, I lost a good horse in a quicksand a little lower down. I dare say it’s a firm bank now, like this one.”
“By Jove! did you really?” said Sellon. “Were you alone, then?” His respect for the other had already gone up fifty per cent. They were in a seldom-trodden wilderness now, a forbidding, horrible-looking solitude, at that, shut in as it was by great, grim mountain walls, and the eternal silence of a desert world. Yet this man, whom he, Sellon, in all the superiority of his old-world knowledge, had held in light account, was perfectly at home here. There was no doubt as to which was the better man, here, at any rate.
“Yes; I was alone,” answered Renshaw. “I’ve always come on this undertaking alone. And I came mighty near losing my life, as well as the horse.”
“By Jove, what a fellow you are, Fanning! I believe if I were to knock around here in this infernal desert by myself for a week it would about drive me mad.”
The other smiled slightly.
“Would it? Well, I suppose I’m used to it. But, wait a bit. You call this an infernal desert. It’s nothing to what we shall find ourselves in further on. And now, I think we’ll camp here. You don’t want to go out shooting, I suppose? We have enough to last us for a day or two; in fact, as much as will keep.”
Three guinea-fowl and a brace of red koorhaan, also three brace of partridges, were slung across the pack-horse. Sellon replied with an emphatic negative. The heat of the day’s journey had knocked the bottom out of even his sportsmanlike tendencies, he said.
They offsaddled the horses, and having led them down to the river to drink, knee-haltered them more closely than usual, and turned them loose to graze. Then, taking a hatchet, Renshaw proceeded to cut a number of mimosa boughs—large, spreading, and thorny. These, in an incredibly short space of time, he had beaten up into a most effective kraal.
“What’s all that about, old man?” said Sellon, who, characteristically, was taking it easy, and lay on the ground at full length, blowing out clouds of tobacco. “There are no lions here, surely!”
“There used to be one or two. I’ve heard them on former occasions. But they’re mighty scarce—almost extinct. Still, it’s as well to be on the safe side.”
As the last faint kiss of after-glow faded from the iron-bound peaks, merging into the pearly grey of night, the horses were driven in and securely picketed within the impromptu enclosure. Then blazed forth the ruddy flames of a cheery camp-fire, over which some of the birds were promptly hissing and sputtering. The small keg of Cango brandy which they had brought with them was broached, and under the influence of a good supper, washed down with good liquor, Sellon’s mercurial spirits revived.
“By Jove, but this is what I call real jolly!” he cried, throwing himself back on a rug, and proceeding to fill and light his pipe. “Hallo! What the deuce was that?”
“Not a lion this time,” said the other, tranquilly, as a long-drawn howl arose upon the night. It echoed weirdly among the great cliffs, dying away in a wild wail. “Only a wolf (Hyaena). Plenty of them around here.”
“They make a most infernal row, at all events. How the deuce is a fellow going to sleep?” said Sellon, as the sound was taken up in a sudden chorus of dismal howls, whose gruesome echoes, floating among the krantzes, seemed to deepen the surrounding darkness, to enhance the utter wildness of this desolate valley.
The camp was pitched in the entrance of a narrow gorge which wound right up into the heart of the great ridge overhanging the river. It lay in a grassy hollow, snugly sheltered on all sides. In the background some hundred yards distant, and about eighty feet in height, rose a perpendicular wall of rock, being one of the spurs of the main ridge.
“Oh, you’ll sleep soundly enough once you’re off, never fear,” laughed Renshaw. “And now, as we are fairly embarked upon our undertaking, we may as well go over old Greenway’s yarn together. Two heads are better than one, they say, and a fresh mind brought to bear upon the story may bring into it a fresh idea or two.”
Putting his hand inside his shirt, he produced the buckskin pouch. At last had come the moment Sellon had long dreaded. How he wished he had refrained from meddling with the thing. Certainly he believed that his friend could get along almost, if not quite as well without the paper, as with it. Its contents must be stamped indelibly in his memory. Yet how would he take the discovery of its loss?
“I’ve never gone into it with you before, Sellon,” went on Renshaw, holding the pouch in his hand, little thinking what tantalising suspense his friend was undergoing. “You see, when a man holds a secret of this kind—has been treasuring it up for years—he’s apt to keep it mighty close. But now that we are fairly in the swim together things are different.”
He undid the outer bag, then leisurely unrolled the waterproof wrapper, Sellon meanwhile staring at the proceeding with a nervous fascination, which, had his friend noticed, he would have put down to intense excitement due to the importance of the disclosure. Still deliberately, Renshaw unrolled the last fold of the wrapper, and produced—a scroll of frayed and yellow paper.
Heavens and earth! It was the identical document! In his wild amazement Sellon could not refrain from a violent start.
“What’s the row?” said the other, quietly. “Keep cool. We want steady nerves over this undertaking.”
“You’re right, old man. I own that mine are a little too high-strung,” answered Maurice, with something of a stammer. “By Jove, what if we should go back practically millionaires! Only think of it, old chap! Isn’t it enough to turn any man’s head? And when you got out that bit of paper, it seemed almost like producing the key of the bullion safe itself.”
But this was said in a hurried, random fashion. How in the name of all that was wonderful had the missing paper come to light? Again Sellon dismissed the idea of the Koranna servants having any agency in the matter, and no other theory was compatible with its almost miraculous reappearance. Stay! Had Fanning a duplicate, perhaps, which he had quietly replaced in the receptacle for the lost document? No, by Jove; that was the identical paper itself. He could swear to it a hundred times over, there in the red light of the camp-fire, even to the pear-shaped blot near the right-hand corner. There it was; no mistake about that. Then he wondered when it had been recovered—when Fanning had discovered its loss—and whether he had entertained any suspicion of himself. If so, it was marvellous that all this time he should have let drop no word, no hint, either of the incident or his suspicions regarding it. The enhanced respect which his tranquil, self-contained companion had begun to inspire in Sellon, now turned to something like awe. “You’ll never make an adventurer, Sellon,” said Renshaw, with his quiet smile, “until you chuck overboard such inconvenient luggage as nerves. And I’m afraid you’re too old to learn that trick now.”
“You’re right there, old chap. I wish I had some of your long-headedness, I know. But now, I’m all impatience. Supposing you read out old stick-in-the-mud, what’s-his-name’s, queer legacy.”
“All right. Now listen attentively, and see how it strikes you.”
And by the red light of the camp fire Renshaw began to read the dying adventurer’s last statement.