Chapter Twenty.
An unexpected Meeting—A friendly Caffre.
“Can this possibly be you, Tom?” exclaimed Frank Jamieson in utter astonishment, when, in the squalid, half-clad figure lying huddled up against the wall of the hut, he recognised his friend and comrade Tom Flinders. “How came you here? It was officially reported in camp that you were killed when our corps attempted to retake the waggons on the 18th. I am most—”
“Would that the report were true!” interrupted Tom in dejected tones; for he felt so completely broken down that not even the unexpected sight of his friend could rouse him. “I should be out of my misery then. These black devils have beaten and kicked me about like a dog; they’ve insulted and starved me, and driven me half-mad by keeping me without drink. Now I suppose they’ll finish up by torturing us both to death.” And, unable to control himself any longer, for he was quite hysterical from exhaustion, pain, and thirst, the poor lad burst into tears.
In an instant Frank Jamieson was down on his knees beside his prostrate friend, and, taking a spirit-flask from the pocket of his blouse, he raised Tom’s head and made him swallow a small quantity of brandy; he then produced a handful of moss-biscuit from another pocket and pressed him to eat it. But Tom shook his head, saying: “No, thanks, Frank, I’ll not take it; you may want it yourself before long. Food is not plentiful in this miserable hole, I can assure you.”
“Nonsense, man!” retorted the other, seeing that, in spite of his refusal, Tom cast a hungry look at the biscuit. “Eat it at once, or I’ll pitch it away.” Then, as Tom devoured the biscuit, Frank said:
“I think our lives are safe, though we may be detained prisoners for some time. The truth is I have a friend at court, who will do all he can for us.”
“But you’re not a prisoner, Frank?” inquired Tom (upon whom the sup of brandy and mouthful of wholesome food had already had a most beneficial effect), as he regarded his comrade with a puzzled look.
“You cannot for a moment suppose that I came here willingly!” laughed Jamieson. “What makes you ask such an extraordinary question? I hope you don’t think that I am a deserter!”
“Why, you don’t look like a prisoner,” Tom rejoined. “In the first place, the Caffres have left you your clothes; and secondly, they don’t appear to have made free with the contents of your pockets; whereas, they’ve stripped pretty nearly every rag off my back, and knocked me about into the bargain. How is it they let you off so easily?”
“Well, as I told you before, I have a friend at court,” Jamieson answered. “It fortunately happened that Untsikana, the chief into whose clutches I fell, is an old acquaintance—in fact, about two years ago I saved his life; and moreover, he was under great obligations to my poor father—”
“Poor father!” echoed Tom. “I hope the captain is—”
“The dear old governor is dead, Tom,” interrupted Frank with a deep sigh. “I thought you knew it. When last seen he was fighting by your side.”
“So he was, but he was all right when I got knocked over. Are you sure he is killed?”
“There can be no doubt of it, I grieve to say. Untsikana saw his body, and also that of poor Patrick Keown. The corps was almost annihilated—counting the fellows that were with me, there are not more than thirty left.”
Their conversation was now interrupted by the entrance of two Caffre warriors, one of whom was Untsikana himself Frank, who could speak the Caffre language fairly well, at once appealed to him on Tom’s behalf, and with such success that the chief not only provided him with food and drink, and water to bathe his wounds and bruised limbs, but also procured him an old tiger-skin kaross and a pair of “veldt schoon,” to take the place of the garments of which his captors had stripped him, and which had been distributed amongst the dusky inhabitants of the kraal, so that there was no recovering them.
“Who shall say there is not some good in a Caffre?” observed Frank Jamieson as he dressed the wound on his friend’s head; “come, Tom, you must acknowledge that.”
“Your acquaintance Umpty-dumpty, or whatever his name is, is certainly not half a bad chap,” replied Tom, whose customary good spirits were returning. “But he is a wonderful exception to the rule. I wonder what they’ll do with us?” he added. “Turn us into white slaves, I expect!”
“Impossible to say,” his friend answered. “I must sound Untsikana on the subject when he next pays us a visit. I might induce him to aid us in making our escape!”
“Not you,” Tom rejoined with a shake of the head. “That would be testing his gratitude rather too much. By the way, when and how did he take you prisoner?”
“That is soon told,” said Frank. “You must know,” he went on, “that the brigadier broke up his camp at Chumie Hoek on the morning of the 19th, and marched, bag and baggage, for Block Drift.
“I was with the rear-guard in command of the remnants of our poor old corps. The enemy came down in thousands from the mountains and attacked the whole line of waggons, from front to rear, at one time, so that we had some precious hard fighting all along the route.
“Whilst the head of the column was crossing the Chumie River the rear waggons were forced to halt for a bit; and then it was that the Caffres made their hottest attack. The artillery received them with four or five rounds of canister and grape, which staggered them above a bit and checked their advance. A troop of the 7th Dragoon Guards then charged them, and I was ordered to support this charge; because, as no doubt you’ve noticed, the Caffres generally break when charged, and then re-form when the cavalry have passed through them.
“Well, during the charge my old horse ‘Trumpeter’ was killed, and I got a nasty fall, striking my head against a big stone. When I regained my feet our fellows were a hundred yards away, and before I well knew where I was, I was surrounded by a dozen Caffres, who would have quickly put an end to me had I not recognised Untsikana and called out to him to save my life. He at once interfered and would not let his men lay a finger upon me; but, in spite of my entreaties, he carried me off into the mountains. To make a long story short, I was kept, closely guarded, in a cave until yesterday morning, when Untsikana brought me on here.”
“Did the enemy capture any of the waggons?” asked Tom.
“From what I heard them say, I think they must have got hold of the hospital stores waggon,” answered Jamieson. “I saw three or four Caffres yesterday in a very miserable state, and Untsikana told me they had been drinking the white man’s medicines. One fellow was terribly bad, and, from the condition of his mouth and lips, I should imagine that he must have been eating some sort of blister (a fact)—and a precious strong sort, too!”
“Hope it agreed with his complaint, whatever that may have been!” said Tom, grinning at the thought of the wretched Caffre’s discomfiture when the blister began to draw. “But what could have induced the stupid beggar to taste such a thing?”
“Don’t you know that the Caffres have an idea that the white man’s medicines possess extraordinary strength-giving properties?” his friend replied. “You’re not half up in the manners and customs of your coloured compatriots. They will at any time steal physic in any shape or form, and swallow all they steal.”
“And did your friend Umpty go in for this course of promiscuous physicking? Though I don’t suppose we should have found him so amiable if he had.”
“Well,” laughed Frank Jamieson, producing a glass-stoppered bottle from his pocket, “while I was in the cave I saw Untsikana handling this, which no doubt he ‘looted’ from the hospital waggon; and he was on the point of swallowing the contents, when, fortunately for him, I caught sight of the label and snatched the bottle from his hand.”
“Why, what is it?—castor-oil?”
“Castor-oil!—no. He might have drenched himself with that for aught I should have cared,” Frank answered. “This is chloroform—the stuff the surgeons use during operations to produce insensibility. It has only been in general use a few months, I believe.”
“Ah! I heard Dr Fraser talking to old McAlpine about it the other evening,” said Tom. “This is the first time it has been supplied to the field-hospital. But what did you want to keep such dangerous stuff for?” he added. “There’s enough of it to poison a troop, I should think.”
“To tell the truth, I popped the bottle in my pocket, and forgot that it was there until this moment. I must throw it away when I have a chance.”
“The sooner the better,” said Tom. “A pretty job it would be if you smashed the bottle in this dog-hole of a place! We should probably drop off to sleep, and never wake again!”
“I will give the bottle to Untsikana when I see him again,” Frank rejoined, “and advise him to pitch it into the nearest river, or empty it away in the bush. It is nasty stuff to carry about.”
But Frank Jamieson did not see Untsikana again, for the friendly chief quitted the kraal that very evening to rejoin his brother-warriors, the majority of whom had by this time crossed the frontier into British territory, and were committing great ravages and depredations amongst the Albany farms and settlements—so much so that Colonel Somerset had to march with the greater number of his troops to Graham’s Town, and from thence follow up the enemy into Lower Albany.