Chapter Twenty One.
The Unknown.
“Thank Heaven you are alive!” cried Miss Anstrade, taking his hand in both of hers, and looking with tear-dimmed eyes into his face. “It seemed I was not free here from the curse that falls on those who are dear to me.”
She drew him to a seat, still holding his hand, and Webster, busily engaged in making hot coffee, stopped at times to place his hand affectionately on Frank’s shoulder.
“And where have you been all this fearful night?”
“Tied to a tree. Three times the light from your lantern fell upon me, and twice a hyaena came and stared at me. Ugh, the brute!”
“Tied to a tree? How did it happen, and that voice, did you hear it calling?”
Frank shuddered slightly.
“I heard it,” he said, “and I would have thought it supernatural, so like my uncle’s voice it was, had it been possible for a spirit to knock me down and bind me.”
“Strange,” she murmured. “I also thought it was your uncle calling, though I had never seen or heard him.”
“It struck me to the marrow,” said Webster, “and I fired at the sound out of sheer terror.”
They all sat silent for some time pondering over the mystery.
“It is beyond me,” said Hume wearily. “When I left you last night I expected to find some black, perhaps a woman, from the terror in the sound of her cry, fallen into the river, or caught by a crocodile, and I ran down to the bank, making noise enough to inform anyone of my whereabouts. On reaching the river I stood still, and without the slightest warning was felled to the ground. On recovering consciousness I found myself bound to a tree and gagged. It all happened within the space of ten minutes after leaving the waggon.”
“The cry was a decoy, then?”
“It must have been.”
“You saw no one?”
“No, nor heard the step of my assailant, though at the time I was listening intently.”
“His feet must have been naked, then?”
“Not necessarily, for he may have worn veldschoens, which give no sound. I examined the ground with Klaas before coming up, and we could see no spoor beyond that made by our party.”
“What possible object could he have had,” mused Webster, “since it was not your death he sought? Do you think he mistook you for someone else?”
“Impossible! Whoever did it must have watched us, and he could only have mistaken me for you. No one has a grudge against you.”
“I see it!” cried Miss Anstrade, who had been looking with knitted brows into the fire. “Just before dusk we were talking of the Golden Rock. It was possible for an enemy to creep up undetected and to listen to our talk.”
“Yes,” said Hume, and he felt for the pocket-book that contained the map.
“That is it,” she cried; “they have taken your secret.”
Frank opened the book with trembling fingers, while the others gazed anxiously, leaning forward.
“It is gone,” he said, starting up.
While they looked at each other, with pale faces, Klaas came up.
“Baas,” he said in a low voice. “Baas,” he repeated.
“Well?” said Hume sharply.
“De ossa is gone.”
“What!” shouted Hume, glad for some excuse to give vent to the anger and bitter disappointment that filled him.
“They were stampeded by lions,” said Webster.
“Didn’t I tell you to have them properly tied?”
“Yoh, my baas! But the rheims; someone cut them in the night. Come, see!”
“Good heavens! Can this be true?”
They ran to the trek-tow, and there saw that the tough rheims which secured each ox to the chain had been severed by a sharp instrument.
Hume laughed bitterly.
“Upon my soul,” he said, “you must think me a nice leader.”
“We can walk,” said Miss Anstrade, looking to the distant mountains.
“We could make a raft from the waggon timber, and float down the river,” said Webster.
“It is not the loss of the oxen I fear. We will recover enough of them to continue; it is the ease with which these unknown enemies have succeeded in their plans that troubles me. Now that I have lost the map I believe there does exist a Golden Rock, and their cunning and superior woodcraft will enable them to win it.”
“Nonsense,” she said; “they succeeded because we were off our guard. Now we know what we have to expect, we will oppose our wits to their cunning.”
“It is too late—they have the map—and will have a long start.”
“There was nothing in the map,” said Webster, “that I could not describe with a stick on this patch of sand.”
“Besides,” she said, with spirit, “do you suppose I am going to give up the search after coming all this way?”
“You are right,” replied Hume; “but it does not improve one’s spirit to be fast bound to a tree all night with a handkerchief in your mouth. Map or no map, we must find the Golden Rock.”
“That is better,” she said, with a smile. “Now, then, let us do something.”
Klaas set the example by starting off on the spoor of the oxen, armed with assegai and kerrie. Miss Anstrade sat down to draw, from memory, a facsimile of the lost map; Hume walked on to a small kopje to plan out the route, for there was no trace of road here; while Webster went down to the river to see whether he could decipher any explanation of the night’s mystery on its broad and shining surface. Long he listened to the murmur and ripple of the shallow river against huge round and jagged boulders strewn across its bed, and gazed into the dark beds of shade cast by the wild palmiet, but nowhere was there any trace of human life—not so much even as a piece of driftwood fashioned by man, or a broken beer-bottle, sign throughout the world of the passage of roaming Englishmen. Overhead passed a flight of cranes, their long legs trailing behind like rudders to steer them in their heavy flight, and from their long bills emitting, at intervals, the harsh cry with Nature’s melancholy note, while flocks of “sprews,” the white-bellied African starlings, flew, with noisy clatter, from side to side, and grey monkeys, their black faces rimmed in white, grimaced from waving branches. As he went down the bank, in and out among the thick bushes and clinging thorns, he started a troop of wild buffalo, which crashed off with many an angry snort, and a minute later was brought to a sudden stand by a moaning sound of no great volume, but conveying an undoubted warning. It proceeded from a cluster of rushes, and he moved his head from side to side in an endeavour to see what caused it, succeeding presently in detecting a slight movement made apparently by a small creature like a rat. Smiling at his doubts, he stepped forward, when once again the moaning was repeated, and he stooped down to peer more narrowly into the thicket. Then he saw that the small object was the tuft of a tail, and following the direction, he made the indistinct outline of a large animal crouching flat, and then, with a start, he met the full, fierce gaze of the yellow eyes. Cautiously he stepped back foot by foot until he reached the shelter of a tree, when the rushes shook, and out sprung a full-grown lion, which, after one look at him, trotted off after the buffalo which he had evidently been stalking.
“Phew!” said Webster, his heart thumping, “I suppose Frank would have shot the beggar, but hang me if I wasn’t pleased to see him cut.”
He waited for some time till his heart beat more regularly, then advanced with greater caution, examining each cluster of rushes and dark patch of bushes very carefully before passing. Half a mile further on the river took a bend and swept against a rampart of huge rocks flanked by a krantz, the home of a pair of white-headed eagles, whose harsh screams wakened weird echoes. Attracted to the wild spot, Webster stepped on one of the rocks, which jutted into the swirling water, to examine the krantz, and, noticing that caverns had been worn into the base by the water, he sprang from rock to rock till his way was barred by a smooth wall of slaty rock, which rose considerably above his head. Slinging his rifle over his back, he made use of his seamanship and quickly scaled the slope, slipped down on the other side, manoeuvred a narrow ledge, and stood in the first of a row of caves. There was nothing in this but a half-eaten fish, left evidently, from the signs, by an otter, but on rounding a slippery corner he entered a roomier cave. To his intense surprise, he saw that it had been occupied, and that recently. The walls and roof were blackened with smoke; on the smooth floor was a pile of ash, with the burnt ends of driftwood around, and on a ledge at the back was a mass of dried grass which had evidently served as a couch. He disturbed this with his gun, and dislodged a skin bag made of the entire skin of a monkey, the neck serving as an opening. Stepping to the mouth of the cave, he emptied its contents. These consisted of a copper cylinder, such as Kaffirs use to keep their “passes” clean, a necklet of crocodile teeth, a bracelet of solid ivory, stained with tobacco, and a lump of quartz, rounded at the edges from much friction. There was nothing in the cylinder, and Webster after a curious inspection of the quartz, which was heavy as lead almost, replaced the articles, and returned the bag to the ledge. He entered two other caves without finding anything fresh, and returned to the waggon, where he reported his discovery.
“You saw nothing to indicate whether the occupant was a European?” asked Hume.
“No; and I took it for granted he must be a black.”
“Natives don’t, as a rule, lead solitary lives, and still less could one of them dwell in loneliness by the side of a river, though the place may be the secret retreat of a witch-doctor.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Miss Anstrade, “the unknown visitor of last night and this hermit may be one and the same.”
“Well,” said Hume, “it is worth looking into; but in the absence of Klaas it would not be wise to leave the waggon.”
“I’ll run down and get the bag,” said Webster; “for there is nothing else in the cave from which you could draw conclusions.”
He started off, and in half an hour returned with the bag.
“This is Kaffir work, certainly,” said Hume; “but,” putting it to his nose, “it has not the native flavour, strong and pungent. This string of teeth threaded on a gut is native, and so is this bracelet. Humph! Quartz. What a weight!” He opened his knife and scraped the surface. “Why, look here; it is half gold.”
A streak of shining yellow showed on one side, between two white veins of crystal.
“It’s as rich as that piece which my uncle broke from the Golden Rock. I wonder where he found it?”
“There’s something more in the bag,” said Miss Anstrade.
“It’s the empty cylinder,” said Webster.
She slipped her hand in, drew out the little tube and opened it, at the same time uttering a cry of surprise.
“Look here!” she said, drawing out a roll of paper.
“I swear,” said Webster, with excitement, “it was empty when I found it, for I placed my finger in.”
She flattened the paper out, and looked at them with eyes wide-opened, and a flush on her cheek.
There, in her hand, lay the missing copy of the map!
Each in turn took it, turned it over and over with a blank look.
“Well, I’m hanged,” muttered Webster, under his breath. “That fellow must have placed that paper in the tube after I left the cave, and probably watched me the whole time, yet I never caught a glimpse of him.”
“He is some half-witted native,” said Hume, after a long pause.
“You forget the cry, after your disappearance. That was the voice of a white man who knew you or your uncle, and had learnt the object of our journey.”
“True, I had forgotten that. Still, one of my uncle’s men, escaping from the attack made upon his camp, may have taken up his home in the cave, and have lost his mind in the solitude. Such a man might have learnt about the Golden Rock, and he would have picked up a few words of English.”
They now heard the lowing of oxen, and presently Klaas appeared with the runaways. Hume quickly counted fifteen.
“Well, Klaas, did you search far?”
The Gaika stretched his naked arm out and swept it round. “They stood all about, some in one place, some in others, but I whistled to them, and they were joyful to see a man. Three I could not find, but the body of one.”
“You have done well, Klaas. What are these things?” and Hume handed over the bag and contents.
“Yoh! Kaffir man made these, but a white man uses them.”
“A white man?”
“Yah, sieur, it is so. It smell white man.”
The three looked at each other with uplifted eyebrows, while Klaas turned the necklet over in his hand.
“That settles it,” said Hume. “Let us search for the stranger. But, as he may be on the look-out, I will make a circuit to the top of the krantz, while you go towards the base, and leave the bag on some rock that can be seen from above.”
This was done. Webster placed the bag on a rock well out in the river, and then retired towards the camp, while Hume watched behind an aloe. For an hour he waited without seeing aught, then descended to the bottom, and himself examined the cave, without, however, finding any fresh evidence. He then returned to the camp.
“It is no use,” he said; “we should be wasting valuable time in searching for this mysterious being. If he had some design in taking that map we should be serving his purpose by lingering here. Inspan, Klaas.”
The oxen were yoked, and the waggon moved on slowly, Hume going ahead to mark out the road, and Webster, taking the “trek-tow,” or looped rheim to guide the leaders.
Before dusk they outspanned on a grassy knoll, and set to work at once with axes to build a fence round. The oxen were driven to the water, allowed to graze a short time, then driven into the enclosure and tied up. Fuel was stacked up in preparation for fires, supper was made and eaten, and then they sat talking about the man of the krantz until the clamorous howling of jackals warned them to be on watch. Miss Anstrade retired to the waggon, the sail was drawn down and two huge fires lit, one on either side of the oxen. Hume crept under, the waggon, and was soon in a deep sleep, while Webster and Klaas, on either side the waggon, kept watch.