Chapter Twenty.
A Mysterious Cry.
For the next fortnight they struggled with the difficulties of the road, and Hume had to call to his aid all his resources in navigating his ship of the desert over boulder-strewn streams, up almost impracticable heights, and down dangerous slopes, wherever the road zig-zagged above yawning precipices. His bared arms grew black under the sun, and by the time the Limpopo was reached he resembled in appearance one of the scattered Boer farmers whom they occasionally surprised in their journey—a man tanned to the colour of his own well-worn corduroys, with a face lined by the drying of the skin, the eyes narrowed through the constant effort to shut out the over-powerful light, and hands bruised, knotted and grimed. In this toilsome trek Webster had to squire Miss Anstrade, and since she dreaded the sight of the oxen straining under the yoke, and would get away from the sharp crack of the long whip, he was thrown much into her company as they walked on ahead for the next outspan. In the loneliness of the slow marches Hume soured rather, and in the evening by the fire it was some time before his silent fit would thaw to the needs of companionship, and the others, having exhausted every topic during the day’s tête-à-tête, made little effort to dispel the gloom. In the veld there are few topics that can outlast a week, and then there is little to fall back upon but the eternal subject of religion, or the ways of nature. Wherever nature is uninteresting and the population is scattered, the mind of man fastens like a limpet on the rock of some verity of the Scriptures, or to the decaying trunk of superstition, and holds on to the end. The Boers in the Transvaal have quarrelled among themselves over their belief, and President Kruger has taken up his rifle in defence of a verse in the Psalms. Our friends had played about on the outskirts of religious controversy about the camp fire; but the men had been firmly checked by Miss Anstrade, who possessed a woman’s unquestioning faith, and latterly they had become abstracted and dull, while Klaas, the Gaika, crooned to himself the legends that hung about the dark kloofs of his own far-distant Amatolas.
“Thank God!” said Hume, as he threw down his whip on the far side of the great river, “we have at last got out of the Transvaal.”
“It seemed to me,” said Miss Anstrade, “that we were going on for ever until the waggon fell to pieces, and we grew too old to see. I have never been so dull in all my life, and am convinced there is a growth of fungus on my brain.”
“And I,” said Webster, looking at his travel-stained clothes, “feel that I am turning into a second Rip Van Winkle.”
“We are like a party of disreputable gipsies,” said Miss Anstrade, with a look at Hume, whose boots were torn, and whose outward appearance was scarcely an improvement on the many-patched garments of Klaas. “Let us get into a new outfit, and do you men act the barber to each other.”
“Before recovering our respectability,” said Hume, “we must overhaul the waggon, grease the axles, repack, mend, and patch up.”
They made a stay there, and the next evening, after several hours of hard work, the camp presented a trim appearance, and the three sat down, quite smartened up, and in good spirits once again, to dine off wild ducks and sand grouse. The map of Old Hume the Hunter was brought out and studied now on the very ground over which he had passed on his adventurous journey, and they found themselves, in their growing excitement, looking away to the south-east, to where the shadowy outlines of lofty mountains showed dark against the sky. Somewhere within that rugged casket lay the treasure that throughout the centuries had remained for them alone, and the flickering light shining upon their faces showed the flush in their cheeks as the thoughts of what its possession would mean flamed in their brains; revealed also the stern look shot from one man at the other, at the second thought that, bound up with that treasure of gold, was that other treasure of a beautiful woman.
“Beyond that mountain,” she said dreamily, in her rich voice, “lies Europe, ambition, power, pleasure, love. I wonder which of these you will follow when the mountains have given up their secret.”
“Give me a house by the sea,” said Webster, “and a wife I love, and who loves me.”
“And the sound of the sea would stir the sailor in you, and one day your wife would be looking at a white speck in the horizon, and you would be walking the bridge again.”
“And she would not grudge me that if she loved me,” he said quietly.
Hume cast a swift look at Webster, whose face had turned white, and he had reached out his hand, for to both of them there came, at that moment, the thought of Captain Pardoe and his betrothed.
“What is it?” she asked, noting the action.
Hume looked at Webster, and then told the story of the lovers who had waited so long.
“But how,” she said, in low tones, “did you know each other’s thoughts?”
The two looked at each other.
“We also are waiting,” said Hume, with a sad smile; but from that moment the shadow of distrust that was coming between them melted before the sympathy revealed by that one chance word.
They talked then, as they had often done before, of Captain Pardoe and the gallant men who went down on the Swift, and planned how they would help the widows and children out of the Golden Rock. And as they talked there came through the darkness a startling cry as of a human soul in agony—so wild, so sudden, that they leant towards each other, and Klaas bolted under the waggon with a cry of “Amapakati!”—“Wizard!”
Again it was repeated, a long quivering cry.
Hume took his rifle from where it stood against the waggon, and, bidding Webster stay, slipped into the darkness. The minutes passed by slowly to those two, standing with bated breath, listening for any cry or token that would break the spell. Ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour, went wearily by, and still there was no sign; then Webster shouted, but without response, then fired his rifle.
“I must go after him,” he said.
“And I will go, too. We should not have let him face that terrible darkness alone.”
“I will go alone.”
“No, no, I cannot stay behind. Let me get the lantern,” she said feverishly, and quickly unhitched the lantern from its hook under the canvas “scherm,” at the same time picking up her rifle.
“This way,” said Webster, and they descended rapidly the slope leading to the river, from which there came a rippling noise strangely mysterious in the dark. The shaft of light swept around from left to right over rocks and ant-hills, and nodding bushes, and at every dark object they strained their eyes. Then there came a sound that chilled their blood: the noise of a body falling in the water, followed by a deep groan.
“Frank,” she cried; “Frank, where are you?”
The reply was unexpected and startling.
“He is dead,” said a voice, hollow and unnatural; “and so will perish all who try to find his secret.”
Miss Anstrade shuddered with horror, and clutched Webster by the arm.
“What is it?” she asked, in a thrilling tone.
With an answering shudder, Webster threw up his gun and fired in the direction of the voice. After the brilliant flash, the darkness closed in blacker than before, and when the echoes of the report had rolled away in the sullen mutterings down the valley the silence was the deeper. They waited long, then went on quickly to the river, where they stood above the rushes, looking at the gleam upon the dark water, and listening with pale faces and beating hearts to faint whisperings and gurgling noises. Webster put his hand to his mouth and called, but his voice broke in a hoarse whisper, and he called again. There was no answer but the wail of a jackal, and after that the far-off booming of a lion’s roar.
“It is horrible,” she whispered, looking round over her shoulder, and pressing closer.
“Let me take you back.”
“No, this way; let us go along the river.”
Again there came a splash from the river, and then, within the shaft of light flashing on the water, there glowed two glittering green specks.
“Look!” she said, with a gasp.
“Hold the lantern,” he said quickly. The rifle rang out, and then the water was lashed into foam, and a dark body showed for a moment in the light.
“A crocodile,” he said, with a nervous laugh.
“A crocodile! Can it—oh, merciful heavens—do you remember when we saw the Irene—the shark?”
“Don’t,” he said, laying his hand on her shoulder.
A deep sigh came to their straining ears, followed by a confused noise.
“Oh,” she cried, “if I could only see what forms there are about I would not be afraid.”
“I think that noise is from the oxen,” he said.
“Baas,” came a warning shout, “pass op de leeuw!”
“That is Klaas—what does he cry? The leeuw—the lion—is it not? Ah, that is better. Give me the lantern again.”
She took the lantern, while Webster, with his rifle ready, kept by her shoulder, and they slowly advanced, following the shaft of light for the reflection of the lion’s eyes. Presently an ox moaned, there was a sound of horns clashing as the oxen bunched together, then the ground trembled to the roar of a lion, followed by the wild rush and crashing of branches. When they reached the waggon there was not an ox remaining. The Gaika, who loved his cattle, was raging about with a lighted brand in one hand and an assegai in the other, hurling insults at the lion.
“Mij ossa,” he said; “mij mooi swaart-bonte; oh! verdomde leeuw!”
“Where is the baas?” asked Webster, at his wits’ end.
“The baas is dead,” cried the Gaika; “mij ossa es dood, und ek is dood.”
Webster took the Kaffir by the arm and shook him. “Stop this noise and build up the fire.”
Klaas obeyed, piling dead brushwood on the coals till the flames mounted up, and shone on the white canvas and on the pale faces of Miss Anstrade and Webster, who stood looking out into the darkness for their missing friend. From far there sounded the wild bellow of an ox, followed presently by the complaining, wailing cry of a jackal and the devilish laugh of a hyaena.
“The lion eats,” muttered the Kaffir.
They longed for the light of day to reveal the dark mystery that hedged them in, and, above all, the meaning of that voice and its warning.
“Klaas, did you hear someone calling before I fired the first time?”
“Neh, sieur, I heard the lady call, and then the voice of the jackal, who led the lion here.”
“Can we have been mistaken?” she whispered; “and yet I heard it plainly: ‘He is dead, and so will perish all who seek his secret.’”
“He cannot be dead,” said Webster fiercely; “I will search again.”
This time Miss Anstrade remained by the fire, her rifle across her knees, and her eyes following the Will-o’-the-Wisp-like flashings of the lantern, while out of the blackness there rang the voice of Webster calling for his friend, a mournful cry that drew no response but the murmur of the river, and the still more plaintive call of a plover overhead. And sitting by the fire, with the light shining in her eyes, and her face resting on her hands, she still heard the voice calling out that Hume was dead, and she was sitting so when, after a long search, Webster came wearily and hopelessly back.
Before the morning, completely worn out, they dozed at their posts, and when there was light enough to show the ground the Gaika slipped away like a shadow towards the river, quartering the ground as he went, with his body bent, and his thin wide nostrils quivering. Reaching the river, he dwelt awhile over the spoor made by Webster, picking up an empty cartridge, then went up to the right, and presently, with a startled look, darted forward to where there projected the butt of a rifle from the rushes. It was Hume’s, and as he lifted it his quick glances roamed over the ground, noting the bruised grass, and then with a “Yoh” he jumped back, for a man stood beneath a tree looking at him with feverish eyes.
“Yinny,” said Klaas, fingering his assegai, and stooping his head to get a clearer view of the figure which was in the shade, then he rushed to the tree with a cry, “Baas, baas!”
It was indeed Frank Hume, gagged and fast bound to a mimosa-tree.
As the sun streamed over the valley the two sleepers by the dying fire awakened, and their haggard faces told how real had been the nightmare of the long night. The morning mist lay in a thick blanket over the river, and they shuddered to think what tragedy lay concealed under that winding-sheet, then started up to the sound of muffled voices, and the next minute advanced to meet two forms that loomed up vast.
“Halloa!” came a hail in a well-known voice.
“Thank God!” cried Webster, springing forward; but Miss Anstrade stood with her hand to her heart, looking wildly at this apparition.