Chapter Twenty Six.
Greenoak’s Plan.
Harley Greenoak sat smoking a pipe in the one living-room of the Commandant’s modest little bungalow. It was night. The only other occupant of the room was its owner; and he was moving tranquilly about arranging his “specimens,” dividing his attention about evenly between these and the subject of conversation. Yet the latter was weighty with the issues of life and death.
“If things go as you say, Greenoak,” he was observing, “we haven’t a man too many; either here, or over the Kei, or indeed along the whole frontier. Yet, look how my hands are tied. You know, I was always against allowing those burgher forces to go home, at any rate until a sufficiently equivalent force had been raised to supply their place. I am hampered at every turn, and if it wasn’t that I believe we are only at the beginning of our troubles instead of the end, I’d resign.”
“Don’t do that, Commandant, if only that it would be a precious difficult thing to supply yours,” answered Greenoak.
“I advised what should be done, and that was to make a quick and secret march, and arrest Sandili and Matanzima, together with some half-dozen more mischievous of the amapakati whom we know, and promise to hang the lot on the first outbreak among their people. When I put it to the Government I was forbidden to move. You know the rest.”
Greenoak nodded. The other went on—
“Look what came of bagging those other two, Vunisa and Pahlandhle. Their Reserve has been fairly well behaved ever since. We can’t hang them because the Gcalekas are an independent nation, but their people don’t know we can’t, and so are behaving themselves for fear we should. But the Colonial tribes are British subjects, and therefore rebels if they begin the row, so there’d be no ‘prisoner of war’ treatment for them. By the way, what has become of that hair-brained young dare-devil who helped us to grab them? I don’t seem to have seen him about lately.”
“Dick Selmes? Oh, he’s being taken care of,” answered Greenoak, drily. “He’s over at Waybridge’s farm. He’s got an attraction there.”