“Haven’t you just been stopping with him?” said Clare rather sharply, turning on the speaker. “He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he?”
“Um—ah—yes, yes. Of course,” was the somewhat confused reply.
“I’m not sure Mr Lamont isn’t right,” she went on for the benefit of the rest. “This is a country full of savages, and savages are often treacherous. Aren’t they, Mr Driffield?”
“Aren’t who, and what, Miss Vidal?” replied the Native Commissioner, who was in the act of joining the group. She repeated her remark.
“Oh yes. You’ll get Ancram to agree with you on that head,” he added significantly.
“There!” she cried triumphantly.
“I say, though, Miss Vidal,” objected another man, “you surely wouldn’t have us all roll up at a peaceable gymkhana hung round with six-shooters, like the conventional cowboy? Eh?”
“Well, where should we be if a Matabele impi were to rush in on us now?” she persisted. “Utterly at its mercy, of course. Imagine it charging out from there, for instance,” pointing towards the dark line of bush on the slope of Ehlatini.
Some of the other occupants of the ‘grand stand’ here raised quite a flutter of protest. It was too bad of Miss Vidal to indulge in such horrible imaginings, they declared. It made them quite uncomfortable. Many a true word was spoken in jest—and so forth. But the men laughed indulgently; utterly and sceptically scornful their mirth would have been but for the sex and popularity of the speaker.
Many a true word spoken in jest! Yes, indeed. Here a lively holiday scene—the clatter of the horses, laughter and jollity and flirtation—nearly a couple of hundred men, besides women and children, the former unarmed,—all save one. The wretched ryot returning at sunset to his jungle village is not more blissfully unconscious of the lurking presence of the dread man-eater, which in a moment more, will, with lightning-like pounce, sweep him out of existence, than are these, that yonder, upon the bushy slope almost overhanging their pleasure ground, a thousand armed savages are hungrily watching for the signal which shall change this sunny, light-hearted scene into a drama of carnage, and woe and horror unutterable. All—save one.